Volunteers at a community pantry say they fear they may have to close unless they can bring in additional donations of money and food.
Tina Sampson-Smith from St Paul’s community pantry, in Norton Lees, Sheffield, said a drop off in donations and a rise in demand had left them in a precarious situation.
Asked how the coming weeks and months looked she replied: “They look pretty grim at the moment.”
According to the Trussell Trust more than 2.2m food parcels were given out in England in 2025, a 56% rise on 2019.
Sampson-Smith said: “I looked at our freezers yesterday and the majority of them are off because we do not have the food stock in them.
“It’s always tough from September to November, but this year is tougher than ever.”
She said, in recent weeks, one day the pantry had 204 people turn up in need of support.
“Food poverty is really, really high at the moment and it’s a never-ending battle to get food because our supermarkets haven’t got the stock to give us,” she said.
Co-founder Jay Judge said: “It’s a day to day battle
“[There’s] more and more people in food poverty, those that you see and those that you don’t see.
“For every person that turns up at the pantry there’s a family behind that.
“We might be seeing over 200 people coming through the door but it’s feeding a lot more people than that.”
Sampson-Smith added: “We provided school lunches during the school holidays, but at this point in time we’ve nothing in our freezers to do that for half term.”
