Larder’s premises hunt

Community foodbank in search for new Kirkton home

A COMMUNITY food project in Dundee is on the hunt for new premises.

Kirkton Community Larder has been running in the city for almost a year, and during the lockdown had been located at The Attic, which was otherwise closed.

However, as the lockdown has eased, The Attic, in Beauly Avenue, has reopened and started to run its kids groups again, leaving the community larder with nowhere to work from.

Project member Eddie Bains, said the whole team is desperate to get the food provision back up and running as quickly as possible.

He said: “We are in meetings with Dundee City Council just now to get us into somewhere like Kirkton Community Centre, but it is still shut at the moment.

“There is no space or buildings available in Kirkton apart from the community centre and although the council is trying to open it up as quickly as it can, it can take a long time because there are tests to do, health and safety to think about, and cleaning.

“We have had councillors on the phone too to try and get a space sorted and get things moving.

“There is no food provision in Kirkton in the meantime, so we are desperate to get up-and-running.”

The group had set up a second community larder in St Mary’s, so for the time being is still able to do deliveries from there.

During lockdown, dozens of families were helped with food parcels from Kirkton Community Larder, and Eddie says there is still a need for a service like this in the area.

He continued: “We ran for about six months prior to Covid-19 because we needed to tackle the food poverty issues in the area.

“Kirkton is an area of high deprivation and ‘in-work poverty’, and at the start of the lockdown we were supporting up to 90 families a week.

“So if anyone is still desperate for food, please get in touch and we will get a delivery out quickly.

“It is not a case of anyone blocking us, everyone is working with us to try and get us in somewhere.”

The larder can be contacted on 07500 020057.

St Mary’s team members: from left, Barbera Myloff, Caitlin Baines and Ann Plunk.