£100K to help Powys Llandrindod foodbank transform premises

Llandrindod Foodbank has been given £99,999 by the National Lottery Community Fund, which it will use to transform its premises – with plans to finally install a kitchen, introduce an advice centre, a lounge area so users can talk to volunteers and use laptops, and create office space for other charities to rent.

The creation of an advice centre will provide access to crisis support to improve people’s mental health, increase volunteering opportunities and support community activity.

In addition to raising their own funds, the total amount of money the charity has at its disposal is around £350,000.

“The grant will allow us to divide the downstairs area into two separate spaces, an advice centre and offices,” said foodbank manager Tessa Bradley.

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“We’ll be able to create a waiting area where people can have a coffee and a chat to volunteers, there will be laptops available for people to use for going through benefits claims or anything that needs doing online.

“We’ll now have a kitchen as we don’t have one at the moment. We’re introducing a comfortable lounge area for people to have a chat and where we can sign post them too.

“We have another floor upstairs, for offices, which we hope to rent out to other organisations looking for space.

“As a future project down the line we hope we can maybe open the kitchen for cookery courses and to do light subsidised meals.”

Work on the refurb is due to be complete by April 2024.

The foodbank is located at Oasis, on Spa Road, where it moved to in December 2021.

The foodbank was established independently in Landrindod in 2010; founded by local people, churches and community groups, working towards stopping hunger in the local area.

It became a Trussell Trust foodbank in 2013 after organisers realised that the need locally was greater than anyone had initially thought.

“People might still think food poverty and hunger is a distant concept but it is now happening much closer to home, not just Africa,” said Tessa.

The foodbank is part of a local network – there are others in Builth Wells and Llanwrtyd Wells, covering 500 square miles of Powys.

“We’re trying our best to help people at grassroots level where it’s really needed,” she said.

“In the last 10 years people have realised the need for it. They were quite anti-foodbank initially, they felt it wasn’t needed.

“But they realise now it’s not just a food handout, we’re trying to give people a hand-up. We’ve been bowled over by the support we’ve had from the community.”

Having initially opened in a cramped basement below Llandrindod-based Mid & North Powys Mind, the current building was donated to the foodbank by a generous local benefactor.

“The original basement was totally inadequate,” added Tessa.

“We had some volunteers who wanted to help out and I explained to them what the ambition was.

“They went away and came back two weeks later, offering to buy us a building. That doesn’t happen every day.

“They bought it, put it in the foodbank’s name, they didn’t want to rent it to us. The only proviso is, if in the future we don’t need it anymore, we give it to another local charity.”

The foodbank is one of 125 community groups in Wales sharing more than £4.75 million in grants.

To find out more about Llandrindod Foodbank and the great work they do, or to get involved yourself, visit their website at https://llandrindod.foodbank.org.uk/.