Not everyone is affected equally. Housing and energy make up a larger share of spending for the poorest households, so the squeeze is at least 2-3 times larger for this group. For the poorest 20%, housing costs are rising by twice as much (1,220) as post-tax earnings (£550).

Going one layer deeper on inflation, it's clear that here energy prices are the main culprit. Imported energy costs are pushing inflation up by around 1 percentage point in 2026/27, reducing the real value of incomes this year alone by £440 on average.

Since the BoE published these scenarios in late July, the data for oil prices, gas prices and headline inflation have all tracked the 'adverse' scenario almost perfectly. But either scenario is grim, even by recent standards, and crucially the impacts are also long lasting.

To put it another way, if incomes were to grow in line with the average for the period from 1961 to the pandemic, households could expect to be around £5K better off in 2029 than they were in 2024. Instead, on average, we're currently set to be hundreds of pounds poorer.

Her executive experience includes ten years as Chief Executive of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, an endowed foundation working with young people, communities experiencing inequity and disadvantage, migrants and refugees and artists. Some words from Moira below 👇

Ms Sinclair is currently Chair of @cloreleadership.bsky.social, Factory International in Manchester, and the Investment Committee of the Arts Impact Fund. 🤝 In addition to her current chairing roles, Ms Sinclair is a Historic England Commissioner and a trustee of the National Theatre Foundation.

📣 Trustee announcement! @moirasinclair.bsky.social OBE will become the JRF Group's (JRF and JRHT) new Chair of Trustees in January 2027, taking over from Prof Carol Tannahill OBE. We thank Carol for ten years of service, including the last three as Chair.

- Significantly improving day-to-day communication with the public, underpinned by involvement of people with lived experience of poverty in local decision-making. This is vital to rebuilding trust in the system.

3️⃣ There are three key avenues for this: - A focus on preventing poverty by making full use of the levers available to them - Providing better-quality, more joined-up local services to support families in or at risk of poverty. And lastly...

This in turn plays a role in the political disaffection felt with local politics. But it doesn't have to be this way. 👣 On top of bolder action and proper funding from the Scottish Government, councils can and must play a central role now in making poverty reduction a reality.

📍 People understand that local councils don't have enough financial backing, but this doesn’t stop them needing support and good local services now. Services are often weakest where they are most needed. "When communities are struggling, they should be prioritised", says @anniemckenzie.bsky.social

- 2 in 3 people think their council receives too little funding - 6 in 10 disagree that their council listens to the concerns of people like them 🆘 Local council staff are stretched and being expected to do more with less, as highlighted by this Grounded Voices participant 👇

💬 'Everyone deserves a council that listens, and services that work,' says our Senior Policy Adviser Charlotte Gorman. 🔎 But too many people in Scotland feel that their council isn't doing enough to tackle poverty.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This morning, we launched our 'Poverty in Scotland 2026' report, showing nearly 1 million people in Scotland are living in poverty, including around 1 in 5 children. Alongside this, we published an explainer looking at the key role councils play in reducing poverty.