A guide to Britain’s cost-of-living crunch

THE SIGNS are there. Richard Walker, the boss of Iceland, a discount supermarket, reports that his customers are switching towards frozen food, as a way to reduce waste, and buying fewer items as they try to manage their cash. Although Iceland is gaining new customers as people trade down, it is losing others to charity. Charlotte White, who runs a food bank in south London, reports a dramatic increase in demand for its services, and a drop in donations that she attributes to squeezed incomes. And Kantar, a research firm, reckons that British households cancelled some 1.5m video-streaming accounts in the first three months of the year, up from 1m in the final quarter of 2021.