Thousands of children are living in poverty in Epping Forest, new analysis reveals.
The End Child Poverty coalition, which commissioned the report showing almost a third of children across the UK live below the breadline, said families were already on a "cliff edge" before the coronavirus pandemic.
The analysis shows 6,155 children living in low-income families in Epping Forest in 2018-19.
This means 24.8 per cent of all those aged 16 and under are living in poverty, though this was a decrease on 2014-15, when it was 26 per cent.
The report follows Tory MPs rejecting a Labour motion to extend free school meals for children over the school holidays.
In response, Conservative run Essex County County has pledged to help feed more than 1,000 children this half term while Labour led Harlow Council has donated £10,000 to a foodbank focused on helping under privileged families.
The research combined recent figures from the Department for Work and Pensions with local housing costs to produce new estimates for low-income families – those earning less than 60 per cent of the median income.
The report is based on DWP data from March, and estimates of the effect of housing costs on poverty rates by Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Social Policy.
The figures show a rise in child poverty across the East of England since 2014-15, with last year's highest rate in Luton 39.8 per cent.
Across the whole of the region, the average rate was 27 per cent.
In Epping Forest, the number of children in low-income families fell from 6,169 in 2014-15, to 6,155 last year.
A DWP spokesman said there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty across the country than in 2009-10, which is a measure against median income in 2011 rather than the current level.
He added: "Making sure every child gets the best start in life is central to our efforts to level up opportunity across the country.
“We have already taken significant steps to do this by raising the living wage, ending the benefit freeze and injecting more than £9.3 billion into the welfare system to help those in most need.”
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