DEMAND at Bracknell food bank continues to be high, despite the summer months being a ‘historically quieter’ time.

The food bank, first opened in 2009, has helped hundreds of people over the summer period, with a marked rise in single parents struggling as their children are off school.

Sarah Walker, social justice lead for Kerrith Community Church, which runs the bank, told the News: “It has continued to be quite busy. The summer historically is always a little quieter in food banks, however demand is still higher than what it was going back a few years ago.”

The number of people needing to use their services ‘more than doubled’ during the pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis, according to Mrs Walker.

When first opened, the service only operated for a few days a week -  but is now open four days a week, including on Monday evenings, aimed to make hours more accessible for working families.

The Kerrith community church leader said that they run a ‘mammoth operation now’, with demand having ‘never really gone down’ since 2020.

Partnered with the Trussell Trust, the bank helped 474 people in July this year, as well as 304 people in August so far.

And demand is unlikely to die down, as the colder months draw in ‘it will certainly pick up’.

Mrs Walker, who has overall responsibility for the bank, added that donations have been ‘slightly down over the last few weeks’.

Donations are received by supermarkets as well as through an app called Bank the Food, where users can see what items their food bank is currently short of.

Having used it for 18 months, Mrs Walker said: “We’ve really seen a difference it makes to us.”

This comes as Peter Swallow, MP for Bracknell, visited the foodbank on Wednesday, August 21.

Mrs Walker said: “He was really brilliant. He was really interested in the work that we’re doing – it felt like there was a real genuine commitment to understand the needs of our community.

The new Labour MP spent a few hours with staff members and volunteers to learn about some of the issues that families in the area are facing.

Mrs Walker continued: “It’s conversations with people like Peter that are really helpful in us all working together to address the underlying causes of people needing to use food banks.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but we can work together to address some of these changes. Ultimately, we don’t want to exist.”