A food bank has seen the number of people using its services double this year - and has also had a rise in domestic abuse referrals.

Tina Harrison MBE, volunteer lead for Trinity Foodbank Radcliffe on Westminster Avenue, says the centre has seen twice as many new referrals this year.

The concerns come as fresh data from the Department of Work and Pensions shows 260 households in Bury hit the government's benefit cap and had their Universal Credit limited in May - a 61 per cent increase since February.

Tina said: "We’ve seen an increase of 50 per cent in new referrals coming through the door this year.

“Most of our people that come through the door attend either because of the benefit cap or an increase in rent which has tipped them over the edge of needing assistance.

“A lot of the people that we see are those that we would not normally see and a lot of working families that would normally be OK, but because of the rise in rents they're coming to us more.

“There is a lot of regeneration in Radcliffe so we’re getting a lot of people where their rents have gone up, their mortgages have gone up and they're really struggling to make ends meet.”

The benefit cap was last raised in April last year, despite most benefits rising by 6.7 per cent this April.

It currently stands at £22,020 for families with children across Britain, or £25,323 for those in London.

Tina added: “We have also had a rise in domestic abuse cases.

"We used to get the odd referral around Christmas time or the football season but we’ve had quite a spike in referrals of domestic abuse coming to us.

“In the last two months, we’ve seen about five or six cases where usually we would only see one or two over six months so it is quite a sharp rise.

“During Covid we did have a lot of people because we were doing things like getting parcels, referrals from GPs and so we quadrupled what we normally did and then it settled down for a short while but we’re getting back up to the numbers we were doing during Covid."

In response to the benefit cap, a government spokesperson said: "This is another example of the dire inheritance this government faces – too many people are trapped on benefits.

“We are taking bold action to support people into work, through reforming job centres and giving local areas the power they need to tackle economic inactivity, which will boost their finances and reduce the likelihood of being impacted by the cap.

"We are committed to supporting low-income families and our ambitious strategy along with a £421m extension to the Household Support Fund will ensure we can drive down poverty in every part of the country."