PROBLEMS with benefits are the main reason people are forced to use food banks, according to the Worcester service's manager.

Grahame Lucas said the findings of a national inquiry into the rise of food banks are borne out by the city's own resource.

According to the inquiry, by Conservative and Labour MPs and church leaders, low-income families "have been hit disproportionately hard" by rising living costs.

The report concluded benefit delays "have been a key reason" people need the support of food banks.

Worcester food bank's manager Mr Lucas said this backed up what he had seen in the city.

He said: "We see people from many different backgrounds, but fundamentally the people in crisis are there as a result of delays and changes to their benefits.

"I think the key issue for me is that this country is going through some really difficult times - with both the economy and austerity measures that need to be taken - but what's frustrating is the casualties of that, as far as we can see, are the most vulnerable people in society.

"The benefits system has a lot of gaps or holes through which people fall - and fall into crisis."

Mr Lucas said the food bank had seen a rise in numbers attending of about 15 per cent in the past 12 months.

This means it currently needs to collect about 40 tonnes of food a year to keep up with demand.

Mr Lucas believes the rise is down to a couple of reasons - the relative newness of the service as well as issues with the welfare system.

He welcomed the inquiry and hopes more publicity can help bring about solutions.

"We're a project that's only three years old so it takes time for people to get to know that it's here and serving this purpose," he said.

"But the growth in the last 12 months has to be an increasing number of people in crises, rather than more people getting to know we're here."

People using the service in Worcester are those in real need, Mr Lucas said.

"We tend not to see the type of people portrayed on Benefits Street.

"The people we see are in real crisis.

"They come to us embarrassed or perhaps ashamed and awkward about having to come to a foodbank.

"What we can do, apart from satisfy them with an emergency food box, is sit them down, give them a cup of tea and talk to them, to try to make them feel as if the whole world isn't against them.

"We're trying to dispel the myth that most of our clients are scroungers - because that isn't the case."

The report concluded: "Benefit-related problems were the single biggest reason given for food bank referrals by almost every food bank that presented evidence to us.

"The inquiry is concerned that there are avoidable problems occurring in the administration of social security benefits, which have a particularly detrimental impact on poor and vulnerable claimants."

In an article for the Mail on Sunday, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby wrote in a piece that he found the plight of a British family at a food bank "more shocking" than a refugee camp he had visited in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He wrote: "I found their plight more shocking. It was less serious, but it was here."