A HEREFORDSHIRE food bank is struggling to keep up with demand as the cost of living crisis deepens.

Leominster Food Bank has seen the numbers of people needing help double from March 2021 to March this year according to their latest statistics.

This is in addition to giving out 189 bags worth of fresh food to schoolchildren before the Easter holidays.

Kathy Bland, who runs the Leominster Food Bank and FoodShare scheme can see things getting worse before they get better.

She said: "We are finding people who used to give to the Food Bank coming in asking for help.

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"Numbers had stabilised in 2021 after a surge in 2020 due to Covid, but the cost of living crisis has seen these shoot up again.

"We have had double the amount of people and three times the amount of children that we have needed to help in March this year compared to last."

Ms Bland said that more needs to be done to help desperate families in need of support.

She said: "I see family after family coming in here and crying because they are having to make a decision between feeding their kids and feeding themselves, or feeding the family and heating the house."

A user of the town's FoodShare scheme, who did not want to be named, said: "We are a one income household with three young kids. It's getting to the point now where we are barely managing to put food on the table and the food share is a real lifeline for us, as it is for many families.

"We've always kept an eye on finances because we've never been rich but recently it's just become impossible to afford everything with prices rocketing."

The food bank in Leominster has now been open for ten years, but it is not an anniversary that Ms Bland is keen on celebrating.

She said "We marked ten years by writing to our local MP to lobby Parliament to get us and all food banks closed down and give people the support they need.

"They say that we are part of the solution, but the fact that we even exist is the problem."