COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Shelter also found that 37% cut back on buying food and 13% put off buying new shoes for their children to meet housing cost

An estimated 880,000 working parents in England have resorted to skipping meals in the past year to cover their mortgage or rent, according to research from Shelter.

The charity said that 10.5% of working adults with children said they or their partner had missed meals in the past 12 months to help pay for their home, equating to 880,000 parents if the figures were projected across the country.

Working parents with children aged under 18 were asked about steps they took over the past year in order to meet their housing costs.

The charity also found that 37% of working parents were cutting back on buying food in an effort to help pay their rent or mortgage, equating to 3 million parents across England.

Some 13% of working parents surveyed said they had put off buying their children new shoes, while 10% delayed buying their children a new school uniform in the past year so they could pay their rent or mortgage.

The government's English Housing Survey recently showed that households were spending 28% of their weekly income on housing costs, rising to 40% for private renters.Shelter quoted a woman named Katherine who lives in Essex with her husband and their two young children. Both parents work full-time.

Katherine said: "My husband and I don't have breakfast because we can't afford it, and we miss evening meals two or three times a month to help with the mortgage. We've really had to cut back on the basics, and I even had to send our daughter to school in an old uniform that I knew was too small; it made me feel horrible.

"We are already at breaking point, so I honestly don't know what we'd do if our financial situation got worse, it really frightens me."

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: "No parent should be forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying for the roof over their children's heads. These shocking figures show that millions of us are having to make these kind of agonising choices every day." "We desperately need the government to make sure that there is a safety net that's strong enough to catch families who fall on hard times and stop them from going through the tragedy of losing their home."

More than 10,000 people took part in the research for Shelter.