Council: £124,500 funding to emergency food network

Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) has announced £124,500 of funding to the emergency food network in the city, covering expenses for supporting vulnerable residents for the next three months.

Since mid-March, BHCC has been working with its partners Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (BHFP), supporting food hubs to provide food parcels and hot meals to those in need.

BHCC had already also committed funding of £45,000 to the food effort, split between core funding for BHFP (£15,000) and matching the funding of the #HungryAtHome crowdfunding campaign (£30,000).

This new funding commitment of £124,500 will be split between food banks already in existence pre-Covid-19, newly set up food hubs, funding for community meals, same day emergency food parcels and funding for the children’s centre food bank.

During the Covid-19 crisis, projects have cropped up all over the city to help projects that already existed to support the city during the pandemic.

The network, which is mostly run by volunteers, continues to deliver at a phenomenal scale, with demand for emergency food still high including food parcels being provided for 4,831 people in 3,001 households across the city.

In the week of March 30, 2020, this was 400 parcels and 1,800 meals compared with 420 parcels being distributed by emergency food providers before the Covid-19 crisis.

Councillor Anne Pissaridou, lead member for food, said: ‘I am delighted that we have committed £124,500 to the emergency food network within the city.

‘This money will go a long way in providing food parcels and meals to vulnerable residents in need over the next three months.

‘We are determined that no-one in Brighton & Hove will go hungry and although there is still a long way to go for the city to recover from this crisis, we will continue to fight for those that need our help.’