The reality of a typical Thursday morning foodbank session in Northampton in January: a volunteer's view

A typical foodbank Thursday in JanuaryIt’s the first Thursday after Christmas and its mid-morning. The foodbank at Northampton Cathedral’s diocese hall is open for business. After its volunteers have sat down together to have a quick cup of tea after their hard work earlier this morning and yesterday unloading and packing food into bags, they are ready to serve anyone who comes to their door looking for help.

Each week they support around 65 families, roughly 250 or more people, and more people are coming each week: people new to the area, newly out of work or on the sick. Two new single people come whilst I am there. Each person who attends gets a bag suitable for their family size, containing food and toiletries. Staff and volunteers apologise that there is no bread today, but the volume of tinned and ambient goods is a great help for each attendee, making a real difference to each household.

People attending get immediate emotional support from the kindness of the volunteers; and they need it. Just about everyone attending today has immediate or long term mental health or physical health issues. I hear stories of diabetes, musculo-skeletal problems, as well as depression and anxiety. All this on top of the reality of surviving on low incomes or benefits in poor quality housing with spiralling heating bills. It is lucky this is the warmest January so far on record. Everyone talks about what this service means to them and the families: it’s about basic survival in a really hostile world. People come though word of mouth referral, in most cases.

There are others who do work and come here because they still can’t cope: people especially in the ‘gig-economy’: reliant on short term, exploitative, zero-hours, minimum wage jobs in warehouses. This is only going to increase as one the largest warehouse parks in Europe is being completed on the edge of Northampton, which will require and employ thousands more people, who work for a while, get laid off, have health problems, and drop through into reliance on foodbanks like this. These kind of jobs are functionally not set up to encourage people to settle down, raise families and offer stability – or really to create wealth in what is becoming a poor town.Ill health is really important in the dynamic of the foodbank, as it has separately been identified as a big cause of Britain’s economic woes more generally. Britain is ill, and people struggle sometimes to access the help they need, given the scale of demand. If people’s health could be improved they would be able to work, and stop needing to use foodbanks. Kerry, attending the foodbank today, said she would love to get back to work, but just too many things related to her health meant it was only a dream at this moment.

Yet it is harder and harder to keep places like this open. It survives on the commitment and passion of the volunteers and associated staff connected to the Cathedral, who do this work in their spare time on top of their day jobs, and who pick up and deliver food to those who cannot make it to the hall by bearing the cost of petrol themselves. A huge amount of unpaid effort and cost goes into making this work. They in turn support other community groups to feed specific communities of users, such as a local deaf community advocacy and support organisation.

The foodbank has almost no storage space, just a share of a hall cupboard full of chairs. They are exploring renting a lock up garage – and again a volunteer will meet part of the costs of that themselves for a limited period. Some of the local parishes withing the catholic community, such as St Gregorys in Northampton, supply the toiletries – another effort from another set of committed local volunteers.

The Cathedral foodclub is part of FAAWN, the Food Aid Alliance for Western Northants, alongside nearly 40 other providers covering both the urban and surrounding rural area. Formed during Covid’s immediate lockdown, the alliance sources, supplies and shares food to its members, sourcing this free from local businesses, retailers and manufacturers, but also simply by buying in bulk, using funds kindly given by the local authority. Through FAAWN welfare support is also provided, signposting people as needed to long term help. By acting collectively they save money, time and effort for individual providers. Through sharing need the Cathedral has just had food shared with it from local FAAWN members from the Brackley and Daventry foodbanks, whose stocks were less under pressure.

The reality is though, that this is unsustainable. The funding from West Northamptonshire council, vital and welcome though it is, is simply not enough, given the scale of need and the rising cost of food. Donations from the public are drying up as families, even those on better incomes, feel the pinch. Shop donations are also reducing, as retailers get more control over their waste products – supermarkets mostly only supply really and truly end of life products like stale bread and very brown bananas to foodbanks these days. Very often the food coming from supermarkets is what the customers have put in the instore boxes for foodbank use, not given by the supermarkets themselves.

The solutions are so obvious: fair wages, proper jobs. Better and preventative healthcare targeted at the poorest; less pressure on families from rising costs that damages mental health. Its not rocket science.But while we wait for this to happen, whilst they deserve so much praise for the brilliant, loving work they do, foodbanks are just a sticking plaster on a gaping wound in society – the gap between the rich, those doing fine enough, Westminster and the reality of life for the bottom quarter: 16 plus million who have nothing now and little to hope for. Just for now, for them, foodbanks like Northampton Cathedral are all there is.