Dirty uniforms and bathing in dish soap: Britain needs a strategy to end hygiene poverty

But he’s admitted these alone are not enough to tackle the crisis.

Yet one hidden crisis remains unmentioned: hygiene poverty.

At a time when the number of people living in ‘very deep poverty’ is the highest in 30 years, it's a crisis that can no longer go ignored.

What is hygiene poverty?

Our research shows that 9.2 million people are going without the essential hygiene products they need to be clean and well – with the cost-of-living crisis and rising energy bills forcing people to make impossible choices between heating, eating and keeping clean.

That means 1 in 4 UK families are affected – children going to school in dirty uniforms, and parents bathing with washing-up liquid.

This creates lasting problems that undermine recent governments' ambitions not only to create education and employment opportunities for all, but also to grow the UK economy.

Cutting back on hygiene products is one of the first steps people take when money is tight, to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table. It’s the smoke before the fire.

How charities are plugging the gap – for now

To address this growing need, charities are working tirelessly to get people the essential items they need to survive. We currently reach nearly 1 million people every week through our network of over 9,000 charitable organisations, but that number is expected to grow.

More than three-quarters in our network reported a rise in demand for hygiene products in the past year, with 30% citing the closure of other local support services as an increasingly worrying factor.

As a result, the sector is under extreme pressure. A social safety net that is over-extending itself, with charitable organisations being asked to shoulder even more responsibility and demand outstripping capacity.

Government has its role to play

But that’s just a band-aid. Addressing the growing number of people in hygiene poverty requires a long-term solution – and that’s where government must step in.

If the government is serious about helping families make ends meet, it must recognise access to essential hygiene products as a fundamental step.

Because every item that makes it into the hands of someone who is struggling is one less adult missing work, one less child skipping school, and one less young person feeling isolated from the world.

With deep poverty at record levels, Government needs an immediate response to the hygiene poverty crisis. This requires:

1. Recognising hygiene poverty as a key factor in its overall anti-poverty assessments and policies.
2. Strengthening support for grassroots charities by incentivising product donations. One example is circular economy measures, which the French government introduced with its anti-waste law and which have more than doubled the volume of products donated to charities in the last five years.

Earlier this week, the PM said, “My number one priority is giving people some room to breathe on the cost of living. That means taking the big decisions needed to make Britain better off, but that also means fixing the everyday things that quietly take money out of people’s pockets.”

Hygiene poverty is not a choice: having to choose between eating, heating, and keeping clean is just fundamentally unfair. And ending the scandal of hygiene poverty is a matter of social justice. Because in doing so, we would encourage participation over absenteeism, inclusion over isolation, and dignity over shame.

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Michael Gidney is CEO of In Kind Direct, the UK’s leading product-giving charity.

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