THREE foodbanks, which have provided emergency grocery parcels to hundreds of crisis-hit families in the Durham area over the past year, have been gifted £1,000 by the charitable trust of the city’s freemen.
The three hubs, operating premises in Waddington Street, Old Elvet and Gilesgate are part of a network of 27 distribution points across Durham and a further 12 in Sunderland, managed by the Durham Christian Partnership from a central warehouse on Chester-le-Street’s Drum Industrial Estate.
Thirty unpaid volunteers in Durham offer five-day collection-point availability with Waddington Street’s United Reform Church open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; Elvet Methodist Church covering Tuesdays; and Gilesgate’s Edge Court Baptist Church on Saturdays.
In the year ending October 854 individual families in the city area each received a three-day supply of food, as well as a pack of household toiletries and cleaning products. The result is 1,408 adults and 406 children benefitted.
“Every three-day parcel is tailor-made to meet the needs of each family because the numbers and situations involved vary. We could not provide this service without our volunteers and the financial support of the public and organizations like the Durham City Freemen, who first helped us two years ago with a matching contribution,” said Peter MacLellan, the partnership’s chief executive officer.
Across their 28 outlets the partnership, set up in 1999, can call on the help of 300 unpaid volunteers and 34 part-time staff, which includes specialist debt advisers.
“Recent changes to National Insurance contributions, announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will, we estimate, add an entirely unwelcome £20,000 to our annual running costs. Changes have consequences, often not recognized,” he added.
Alan Ribchester, one of the freemen’s five charitable trustees, said: “We are supporting the Durham foodbanks when they are working to meet increasing demand for their services and, at the same time, face rising overheads which are the direct result of recent changes in Government policy. We sincerely hope they will succeed.”
