There are now 4.45 million children living in poverty, a with a rise of 100,000 on the previous year.
Overall, 31 per cent of children in the UK are living in poverty.
The figures are from the Households Below Average Income statistics 2023-24 published by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The Government defines poverty as a household of relative low income after housing costs are deducted.
The definition – which is measured both before and after housing costs – refers to people living in households with income below 60 per cent of the country's median average figure.
The figures also show that the majority of poor families are working families, with nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of poor children are living in working families.
Forty-eight per cent of children of families with the youngest child under five are living in poverty, and 43 per cent of children in lone parent families are in poverty, higher than the rate for couples at 26 per cent.
The figures also highlight that 6.3 million people in poverty were in a family with a disabled person.
Families with three children are more likely to be in poverty (44 per cent), compared with families with two children (25 per cent), or one child (21 per cent).
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said that their analysis shows child poverty will rise to 4.8m by the end of this parliament (2029-30) unless it takes urgent action including scrapping the two-child limit in its forthcoming child poverty strategy and stepping back from benefit cuts.
Responding to the statistics, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group and vice-chair of End Child Poverty Alison Garnham said, ‘Today’s grim statistics are a stark warning that government’s own commitment to reduce child poverty will crash and burn unless it takes urgent action.
‘The government’s child poverty strategy must invest in children’s life chances, starting by scrapping the two- child limit. Record levels of kids living in poverty isn’t the change people voted for’.
Compared to 2022/23, 500,000 more people were in households that had to use a food bank in the previous 12 months, including 300,000 children.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said it had become ‘unacceptably commonplace’ for families to rely on food banks..
JRF’s chief analyst Peter Matejic said, ‘The inheritance of the new government was a third consecutive year of rising child poverty and a second year in a row of falling incomes, both alarming symptoms of a deep crisis in living standards. These figures, collected from the final year of the previous government, are a sign of an increasingly lopsided economy and a social security system that is failing to protect people.
‘Our own analysis yesterday showed that unless the government intervenes, average household disposable income is set to fall by £750 a year by 2030. This is a clear signal that without concrete action to boost incomes, the Government will fall far short of one of their key electoral missions of increasing living standards for all families by the end of the parliament.
‘Being in a family containing a disabled person already means you are more likely to be in poverty. The cuts announced by the Government yesterday are going to hit this group hard, pushing hundreds of thousands more people into poverty, which is entirely the wrong approach.’
