Norwich food bank forced to turn people away due to funding gap

A community foodbank said it has had to turn people away due to high demand and funding struggles.

The Silver Road Community Centre in Norwich, Norfolk, started its food bank and community fridge in 2020, in response to the Covid pandemic.

The food bank is run by a team of volunteers and relies on grants and donations to finance the service.

Julie Brociek-Coulton, a Labour councillor on Norfolk County Council and a volunteer manager at the food bank, said: “We used to get quite a lot of grants, but with the cost of living and everything, it’s just been so cut back.”

Over the last five years, Brociek-Coulton said she has seen an increase in the number of people needing the help of the food bank.

The Trussell Trust, a food bank charity, said it has seen a 51% increase over the last five years in the number of emergency food parcels it has provided to people in the UK.

Last year 332,540 emergency food parcels were handed out by the trust across the East of England, compared with 190,144 in 2019.

Brociek-Coulton said that the food bank and community fridge serve about 100 people every week.

“That is a lot of people who are coming in, and we’re an essential part of the community,” she said.

“Everyone I talk to about food banks, they mention Universal Credit.

“But it’s not like that anymore. All sorts of people are coming in here now,” she added.

The Silver Road food bank is funded by donations from the community and grants that the team apply for.

“Recently we put in for a grant that would help us for six or seven months, and we didn’t get it,” Brociek-Coulton said.

“That was one of the main things we needed to survive.”

“We used to get quite a lot of grants, but with the cost of living and everything, it’s just been so cut back.”

Without this grant, Brociek-Coulton estimated the organisation would be able to help 50 fewer people every month.

She added: “It’s really devastating to those people, but what can we do?”