Section:GDN 1N PaGe:16 Edition Date:190830 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/8/2019 19:44 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Friday 30 Aug ust 2019
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Page 31
Soaring demand over
school holidays leaves
food bank stocks low
Amy Walker
Food banks in some of the most
deprived areas are running “critically
low” on supplies because of a rise in
demand during the school holidays.
Organisers said the period since the
fi nal week of July had been particu-
larly diffi cult because donations were
lower over the summer, while more
families were seeking help than in pre-
vious years.
Tricia Ryder , a distribution centre
manager at Leeds North & West food
bank in Yorkshire, said: “We’re run-
ning critically low on supplies. The
summer months are always the time
when we get the least donations, but
each summer, we’re getting more and
more attendants.”
Ryder added that there had been a
drop in donations over the summer,
which she believed was because more
people were struggling fi nancially.
“A lot of the people who donate out-
side of the summer holidays are people
who are then struggling themselves
when their children are off ,” she said.
Although national fi gures are yet
to be calculated for the number of
food parcels distributed this sum-
mer, anecdotally many food banks
have reported an increase.
In 2018, the Trussell Trust, which
supports more than 1,200 food banks,
gave out a record 87,496 parcels to
The volunteers
‘We get lots who are crying, especially mums’
“On Monday, we were down to the
last few tins,” said Claire Bowerman,
pointing to 400 empty crates in the
hall of a Salvation Army church in
Preston. “We’re helping so many
people that the food that’s coming in
is not lasting.”
Since around 20 July , when most
children in Lancashire began their
summer holidays, the small team
here have handed out more than
1,000 bags to people in crisis. But,
while a two-month supply of food
would usually line the walls in
storage boxes, this summer food has
been given out almost as quickly as
it is donated.
“At the moment, we’re seeing
more and more families, and more
of them are working. It’s a really
sad situation,” said Bowerman, the
centre’s coordinator.
A decade ago, the church
in Preston’s city centre began
distributing food parcels to 30 or so
people a month, but as the demand
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