Inside the Big Issue: Time for change

For 33 years the Big Issue Group has worked to create opportunities for people affected by poverty across the UK. We have been both safety net and a vital platform for those on the margins of society as they rebuild their lives. Over time, we have also grown to invest in other organisations committed to ending poverty.

But it’s become increasingly clear that we need to do more.

In Britain today one in five people are living in poverty and a staggering 3.8 million people live in extreme poverty and struggle to feed, clothe, and keep themselves warm. This is a crisis affecting our neighbours, friends, and family members. We refuse to accept this.

• Get ready, Newcastle: the Big Issue Community Roadshow is coming to town

To get to grips with the mood of the nation, particularly following the summer of riots right in the heart of our communities, we teamed up with YouGov to commission new research and get a clear picture of where the nation sits. Over half of UK adults polled said they thought the government wasn’t doing enough for people in poverty. That’s a high  level of disgruntlement. More telling was the finding that 69% of respondents felt that local issues can be best addressed when individuals and organisations work together to address them. It’s increasingly clear that top-down solutions are unlikely to come.

And so, Big Issue Group’s plans for the future coalesced around one clear realisation – it is within the communities and grassroots that the future will be built. There can be no reliance on top-down governmental organisations, but rather local people, businesses and organisations, uniting to create solutions with collective action, that will offer hope of reversing the poverty crisis and building foundational change. And then build pressure on governments to properly act rather than provide sticking plaster short-term solutions.

Welcome to Big Issue’s Big Community. We have three parts to this: the Community Roadshow, the Big Issue Membership scheme and our new Poverty Zero policy call.

Read all about it in this week’s issue!

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Inside the kitchen at the fine dining restaurant staffed by homeless chefs

“Toby is holding a plastic bag full of red liquid a little too light to be blood. Strawberry soup, to go on a panna cotta, he tells me: “Strawberry and basil, it works quite nicely.””

Home Kitchen is a different kind of restaurant: it is staffed by novice chefs with experience of homelessness. Our reporter visited on the week of its opening.

Prisoners are teaching each other to read. Here’s how it’s changing life behind bars

Shannon Trust, a charity that supports prisoners to help other inmates to read, said 67% of the prison population either can’t read at all or read at a level below age 11. That needs to change.

Don’t ‘privatise the NHS by stealth’, Starmer told

“Privatisation is not the answer,” Elizabeth Pfiester told Big Issue. American by birth, she has lived with type 1 diabetes since the age of four and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2018.

The NHS treatment she received saved her life and she is grateful that she didn’t have to deal with the medical system in her native United States.

“I didn’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops like I did in the States,” she said.

Campaigners have warned that a health system similar to the one in the US could be on the way following a damning report identifying sweeping failings in the UK’s health service.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.