OFFICERS developing a poverty strategy for Bradford should ask more people on the breadline for their experiences - a councillor has claimed.

During a discussion on what is being done to help the most deprived people in Bradford, Councillor Jeanette Sunderland (Lib Dem, Idle and Thackley) pointed out that poverty means different things to different people, and the Council will only get a handle on the issue only by speaking to the poorest in the District.

She told a meeting of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee on Thursday that some may view poverty as not having a Netflix account, while others experience poverty as not having any space for their children to play other than the landing of a block of flats.

The Committee was receiving an update on Bradford's anti poverty strategy, and were told that Covid had completely changed the poverty landscape in Bradford.

The impact of the pandemic had highlighted levels of poverty in the District, and members were told that food bank used had risen from 15,796 meals being provided in February 2020 to 54,468 by February 2021.

Housing service received 8,000 calls relating to homelessness concerns during Pandemic

Around 50 per cent of Covid fatalities occurred in the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Bradford.

For the 20 per cent least deprived areas of the District it was 7 per cent of fatalities.

Members heard of the work that was done to tackle poverty during the pandemic, from partnerships between Bradford Council and local charities to work to provide school children with laptops to work from home to a scheme to find accomodation for rough sleepers.

Cllr Sunderland said the Council could not use the Pandemic as a "get out of jail free" card, pointing out that poverty had been a major issue in Bradford for years.

She said: "With this strategy I want to see how we've used the lives of people living in poverty. Maybe go to the people living in poverty and ask them what it means. Poverty could be you have just enough money, but your child has nowhere to play.

"Poverty might look like an area's community centre that can't afford to cut its own grass.

"Often we come to this issue based on what we think poverty looks like rather than what poverty looks like to the people living it."

Councillor Sarfraz Nazir (Lab, Manningham), said: "I don't think Covid has changed the landscape. it has made things worse, but the poverty was already there.

"We were in a bad situation before, Covid just made it worse."

Members asked officers to provide more details of how successful the various measures mentioned in the report had been when they next came before the committee.