WOKINGHAM Foodbank is on the move after spending five years at its current site.
The Broad Street Walk facility is moving to Winnersh, in a bid to increase floorspace and help more residents.
Manager Annette Medhurst said that she is really excited about the move, which is coming as a “big change” to the charity.
“Our Broad Street Walk site is quite small and narrow, and there is no parking,” she explained.
The new site at 498 Reading Road, next door to Miles and Daughters Funeral Directors, has on-site parking for the charity’s delivery van, and significantly more storage space.
Ms Medhurst said this is especially important, as the charity is experiencing more demand than ever before.
Between April and September this year, it provided 1,768 emergency food parcels, and 741 of these went to children.
The figures are an 83% increase on the same period in 2019.
“We have been looking for a new space for quite a long time,” she said. “The pandemic really highlighted the level of food insecurity in the borough.
“Lots of hardship charities are finding that it is busier than this time last year. Having enough physical space to operate has been a challenge.”
Ms Medhurst said that Wokingham Foodbank covers the entire borough, and believes that Winnersh is a good, central location.
“It will be a big change to move out of the town, but it will give us the space and opportunity to look at other ways we can help residents,” she said.
The foodbank received the keys to its new site earlier in the autumn, and has been installing warehouse shelving to manage the stock.
“The people that have already seen it said it feels like a great space for us,” she said.
The move will begin on Monday, with the warehouse team moving to the new site to date and sort the donations.
The foodbank will not close to residents during this time.
Anyone donating to the charity will be directed to the new site from next week.
However parcel collections are not changing yet.
Any residents that collect a food parcel from the charity will still do so from the Broad Street Walk site until February.
From that point, collection will move three-minutes away to Waterford House, in Erftstadt Court, Wokingham.
The building is being transformed into a voluntary sector hub, and is currently home to Citizens Advice Wokingham.
Once the parcel collection point has moved, signs will be placed at Broad Street Walk to direct Foodbank visitors in the right direction.
