'Tone deaf at best' - advice to stock up on essentials worries experts and low-income families

**“Tone deaf at best” — advice to stock up on essentials concerns experts and low-income families**

Samantha said she carefully manages her budget each month so she can pay for childcare for 12-year-old Oscar while she is working.

A single mother has said that following government advice to stock up on emergency supplies would mean cutting into the childcare money she sets aside for the school holidays.

Samantha Richards, who works full-time and depends on Universal Credit and her son’s disability allowance to pay the bills, said the call to prepare made her think of the “survival of the fittest”.

Wes Streeting said people should have water, tinned goods, baby food, torches and mobile phone charging packs ready in case of an emergency.

But one professor said the guidance “will appear at best tone deaf and at worst almost insulting” to households living in poverty.

The UK government said people did not need to buy everything at once.

It has set out advice for households to keep three days’ worth of bottled water and tinned food to cope with a crisis such as war, an online attack or a natural disaster.

But Samantha, 47, said not everyone has spare money for purchases like these.

“I think the advice is good, but we do want to know what [the government] plan to do in the event of us needing this.

“It just worries me.”

Samantha is involved in Changing Realities, a partnership of more than 200 parents and carers on low incomes from across the UK.

She already has torches and blankets, and she never allows food in the house to run out completely.

However, her autistic son’s safe foods need to be kept in a fridge and freezer, and she worries that if an emergency did happen, he would not be able to eat tinned food even if she bought it.

Instead, they would have to depend on other items in the cupboard.

“You may not feel very well after a few days but you can last more than three without eating,” Samantha said.

But she believes you cannot go very long without water, so that is what she would put first.

According to University of Glasgow professor Ruth Patrick, the UK government’s guidance “will appear at best tone deaf and at worst almost insulting to the 14 million households currently facing poverty across the UK”.

She leads the Changing Realities project and added: “There is a profound mis-match between this suggestion and the daily realities for parents and carers on a low-income up and down the country who are struggling to get by, especially as costs continue to rise and the temperatures drop.”

Ana said her childhood was spent watching her grandmother and mother stock the pantry for emergencies.

“Preparedness shouldn’t be just for people that really truly can afford to,” said Ana, founder of UK Preppers Club on Facebook.

She said she was disappointed by the UK government announcement because it did not tell people what to actually do in an emergency.

Ana said she would have welcomed advice on what to do if there is no running water — for example, how to flush a toilet.

The 42-year-old from Swansea said she was raised to keep “a rotating pantry” as a backup for emergencies, including growing her own food and preserving it.

She said it was Covid that made her “up the ante” when she was heavily pregnant and ended up needing an emergency C-section.

Unable to feed her baby naturally, she found she did not have enough formula and was quoted £300 online for it, while the supermarkets she tried were out of stock.

That was when she began pushing for “preparedness”, and said: “Look after your family, then, if something like this happens, you don’t have to leave people, like myself at the time, vulnerable.”

Ana said her Facebook group has grown by 300 members in just under three days.

Ana said even having a plan for who would collect your child from school if the power went out, or where the family would meet if their home was inaccessible, would be a good start.

“It doesn’t have to be the Armageddon’s happening, but just generally having a coherent plan of the family. What happens if?” she added.

“What happens if there’s no power? What do you do? All those kind of little plans.”

Ana said her advice would be for people to buy an extra tin or packet of crackers each time they shop, gradually building up supplies.

Donna Lloyd said preparing for emergencies is not realistic for everyone, but a tin here or there could help.

Donna Lloyd, 60, a supply teacher in Denbighshire, has been preparing with her wife since a power cut during the Covid lockdown showed them they had no way to cook.

She says “in all honesty, no, it is not realistic” for everyone to be able to afford emergency supplies.

Donna believes the UK government should use television programmes to explain how to prepare.

Alongside stockpiling, she also thinks people should learn first aid, how to collect, filter and purify water, and how to power items such as radios and fridges using solar power, power banks or a generator.

Yasmin Ibison said the UK government needed to offer more support for low-income households.

(JRF) said preparing for emergencies was sensible.

There are 7.4 million low income families in the UK who were unable to afford essential items in the last six months and 1.5 million households across the UK who have used a food bank in the past six months, according to

Yasmin added: “When we have millions of people who already can’t afford essentials like food, heating, basic toiletries, the question I ask is how are they going to afford to buy additional items in their cupboards if they’re already struggling to meet these most basic and everyday needs?”

The UK government said: “This campaign is about providing the public with simple steps to ensure households are properly prepared, freeing up front line services to support those most in need in the case of emergencies like extreme weather or power outages.

“The advice is clear, you don’t need to do it all at once. Build up your readiness gradually over time by taking it step by step, and picking up an extra item or two when you can.”