Carlisle food bank warns they may have to start turning families away due to falling donations

Volunteers at St Barnabas Church say they’re worried they may have to start turning people away as donations fall, while the number of people needing their services continues rise.

Volunteers at the Carlisle food bank say empty stock room shelves are becoming more common, making it harder to keep the food parcels topped up.

One mum-of-four, who relies on the food bank said: "It's is obviously very worrying because everything is just going up and up and up, even bread.

"Milk is all going up and obviously everyone is going to struggle."

Gemma McManus from St Barnabas Church says the food bank is receiving less food, while demand for the service continues to rise amid the cost of living crisis.

She said: "We used to get a lot more food items donated from different supermarkets and even just people in the church, in the community.

"But everyone's struggling and it has a big impact on the things that we get donated and the amount we get donated.

"It will end up at a point where we'd have to make some decisions that we can't help some families, which we would never really want to have to do."

One of the reason for the decline in supplies is from supermarkets as they reduce surplus waste.

Kelly Ashbridge from Cumberland Building Society said: "What we're seeing is that demand is outstripping supply.

"Supermarkets and shops and organisations are getting better at reducing food waste, which then means organisations like FareShare, Lancashire and Cumbria who redistribute that surplus and rely on that food are seeing less food to redistribute in the first instance."

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