Cupboard bare after foodbank gifts taken

A SWANSEA foodbank was left with nothing to offer families in need after a trolley full of donated goods at Tesco was stolen.

Clase community foodbank at St Teilo’s Church has been helping to feed people in need for the past six months after a group of volunteers decided to set it up.

Sarah Fyfield, 31, from Clase, is one of the volunteers at the foodbank that receives just one donation every week from Tesco.

“There’s a group of eight volunteers and we’ve done it off our own bat,” she said.

“We get one donation every week and it’s from a trolley in Tesco. The trolley was inside by the checkouts but then they put it outside and people started taking stuff out of it constantly so the amounts we had were dwindling.

“People stopped donating because things were being stolen. Last week someone took the two trolleys, as they get split between us and another foodbank in the city centre, so we had no donations at all. This week we’ve also been told that they want to give it to a different foodbank.”

The volunteers are now worried their community will suffer as Tesco has been providing their only donations.

“We can get up to 17 families in a day,” Miss Fyfield added. “We’re open every Thursday but we do emergency foodbanks if someone needs it, which happens often.”

A Tesco spokesman said: “We have no plans to cease foodbank donations at our Marina store.

“We are committed to helping tackle food poverty and our Swansea Marina store has donated 22,300 meals to local charities and community groups through our Community Food Connection programme to date.”