A furniture bank said it has been helping families whose children were sleeping on floors, piles of clothes and other makeshift beds.

Peterborough-based Care Zone, which has a warehouse on the edge of the city, plans to spend £80,000 this year on beds and mattresses for local families.

"Many children are sleeping on a pile of clothes, or maybe just on the hard floor," said Ashley Wilcox from Care Zone, adding: "That's not good enough."

Peterborough City Council said it was working with local charities to reach as many families in crisis as possible.

Care Zone is one of several organisations part of the council's crisis resilience fund, a network helping people with food parcels, advice and other services.

Its volunteers clean and repair donated furniture and other household goods, giving out more than 3,500 larger items last year and 425 smaller items, such as saucepans and tin openers.

Of the 1,900 people who used Care Zone last year, about 845 were children.

This year the warehouse is piled high with brand new mattresses ready for families in need.

"We see families that have basically been in temporary accommodation," said Wilcox.

"There might be a family of five in one single room sharing a few beds, sleeping on the floor, nowhere to cook."

He said tackling bed poverty was a priority because of the impact it had on children's education.

"For children in particular, a good night's sleep is really essential.

"By giving them a bed, they have a much better chance at doing better in school."

Anyone can donate items to Care Zone, and it is accessed by people being referred through organisations such as the council or their GP.

Esther Baffa-Isaacs, from the city council's poverty prevention team, said there was "much more we can do" to reach people in crisis.

She said the authority recently wrote letters to 3,200 households in the city which it had identified as being in a "crisis state", to check they were claiming the correct benefits and knew where to find support.

"That was what it came down to, just saying, 'you have help'," she said.

A recent study by Policy in Practice found people in Peterborough were missing out on £92m from unclaimed benefits.

Baffa-Isaacs said bed poverty was a "significant" issue where the authority was "very keen to do more".

She said: "Child bed poverty is significant, and it has an impact on educational attainment."

About one-third of children in Peterborough are thought to be living in poverty, according to data, external from 2024 and 2025 published by the Department for Work and Pensions, compared with a UK average of 26%.

Zameer Ali, Peterborough City Council's cabinet member for communities and public safety and a Labour councillor, said the authority was "doing everything" to reach people.

He said language barriers could be a problem, and wanted information to be as easy as possible to understand, for example where a parent may be asking their child to translate for them.

"We don't want you to go without and we certainly do not want you or your children to fall into any form of hardship," he said.

"What you need to do is reach back to us and say 'I need help'."

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