A Sheffield food bank is calling for donations of money – after demand for food parcels trebled in five years.

Rachel Smith, who is in charge of Burngreave Food Bank, explained how since the start of the Covid pandemic the demand for food parcels had doubled from 20 to 40 every week. Following the cost of living crisis last year demand had increased even further.

She said: “Since the food bank started in 2012, there was a steady increase and that seemed bad but then obviously during Covid it just shot up.

“But then the cost of living crisis hit and it went up even higher.

“Last year we got up to about 60 food parcels, so it sort of trebled.”

Burngreave Food Bank has had to change how it operates due to this surge in demand, and now works out of larger spaces to cater for the increase in customers.

Ms Smith said it now needed funding to pay for support to help those in need out of poverty.

She said: “We are facing quite a big fundraising need.

“We are trying to support people with the issues that are driving them into food banks in the first place.

“If you can help people to the point where they don’t need to use food banks then actually that’s the biggest win of all.

“It is worth a lot more than a bag of food.”

There are multiple ways to donate money to Burngreave Food Bank including setting up a direct debit payment, using Paypal or via the food bank’s Just Giving page.

Ms Smith said: “At the moment we are buying about 60 per cent of the food we give out, donations are only covering 40 per cent of it.”

Volunteers said that although they had seen numbers of people using food banks drop off this year, the recent news of the benefit cut will potentially have a massive impact.

Ms Smith added: “It usually disproportionately affects people at the bottom.

“People who are already struggling.

“A lot of the people who use the food bank are people that will be in that category.”

The food bank also explained that Tesco had been a massive help to food banks over the years, as they have donation points where members of the public can donate food.