Hucknall food bank needs more help at its busiest time of the year

The food bank, based at Under One Roof on Vine Terrace, is seeing more people than ever coming in on daily basis as the cost of living continues to hit people hard.

Yvonne Campbell, food bank manager, said: “Monday the other week was horrendous, we had 45 people coming in from 9.30am onwards and that’s just the beginning.

"There is no sign of things slowing down either, people need us more than ever.

"We’ve told the singles and couples who usually come in once a month, they can come in twice this month with it being Christmas but last week, over the days we were open, we helped about 89 people, including the ones we deliver to.

"We seem to be getting a lot of referrals of bigger families with five or six in them but still the main majority is single people, especially single men because they just haven’t got the money after their basic allowance."

People have been donating food and money, including Hucknall firefighters, with their 12 days of Christmas campaign, Hucknall Town FC, and Lovelace Theatre have all donated in recent weeks.

Yvonne continued: “People give us money and that enables me to go and buy items and most weeks, I am spending between £200 and £400 a week to get in stuff we need.

"Basic tinned stuff we get but I’ve been trying to buy fresh stuff and frozen stuff, like frozen meals, because they often work out at better value.

"We’re fortunate in that we’ve got several freezers and we can fill them up and people can take them home and put them in their freezers.

"But again, I can only offer them two or three items, even though we’ve got more freezer space.

"But if the number of people coming in keeps going up, then I have less to offer each person.

“All our freezers and fridges were full at the beginning of the last week and I went out and spent about £200 on the Monday night re-filling them and they were still empty again by the end of Tuesday.

"I don’t know where some people think the food comes from – I think some think it’s donated by the Government or the council, but it’s not.

"We rely in donations, either in food or money to get food, and we can only give out what we’ve got.

"I’m now even saying we’ll take pasta and tins of beans and I never thought I’d say that because we used to have so many of them in the past but now we’re getting so many more people coming to us, even they’re getting low.

"The basic tins of food like meat, tuna and vegetables, everyone gets one of those and rice, spaghetti and noodles.

"But what I’m thinking always is making sure there’s something there for the last person as well as the first ones because that’s not fair otherwise.”

To get invovled with the the food bank or donate food or funds to it, vist the Facebook page at facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064897681059