Lincoln foodbanks stretched by another rise in demand but fewer donations

Foodbanks across Lincoln say they're under severe pressure with a big rise in referrals for emergency parcels at the same time as seeing far fewer donations.

There's been a 45 per cent increase in demand but the amount of individual donations and surplus food from producers are also reported to have fallen.

We spoke to Simon Hawking the Chief Executive of Acts Trust about the situation.

On average the numbers work out at 1 out of every 172 households in the city

He says there’s been an unprecedented number of people needing help.

"We've seen a 45 increase compared to this time last year in the number of households needing support through food."

"That works out at around 1 out of every 172 households in the city."

"On every third street there's someone eating from a food parcel which is quite shocking."

"We were quite alarmed about just how much the need has increased in terms of the number of people trying to access emergency food support but the thing that shocked us is at the same time support is reducing it terms of the amount of food available to support food banks and food pantries."

We also discussed the issue with Simone Connolly CEO of the redistribution charity Fareshare Midlands.

We need the Government to put money into redistribution

She says: "In Lincolnshire in particular lots of farmers and producers are wasting food and it's because they can't afford to redistribute that food to organisations like Fareshare so we're calling on the Government to invest in helping the food industry with the cost of redistributing that food."

"We absolutely need central Government to listen and put some investment into redistribution of surplus food."

"People that are going hungry - if all the food that was available for redistribution was redistributed people wouldn't have to go hungry."

"We're a long way off achieving that but there has to be more that the Government could do."

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