FareShare Sussex

During September and October, we continued to operate in a Covid19-safe manner with safety measures such as compulsory mask wearing and PPE, social distancing, enhanced cleaning and rotating working from home to ensure that we remain a safe space for everyone.

During these two months, we have continued to do the best we can do with the reduced amounts of food we are getting delivered due to the national shortage of HGV drivers. We are getting just enough food delivered to be able to continue to provide a good service to our many community groups across Brighton and Hove, Sussex and Surrey. One of our local suppliers, Bookers, has significantly increased the amount of food that they give to us on a weekly basis. This has really helped us in continuing to feed so many people in food poverty.

If you know any food businesses that might be able to donate their surplus food to us, please do introduce them to us so that we can continue to feed as many people in food poverty as we can.

During these two months we:

• Redistributed a total of 137.8 tonnes of food, that is the equivalent of 328,246 meals. Before the Pandemic we were redistributing 50 tonnes of food a month, so we are gradually returning to nearer those levels.

• Provided food for 154 charities and community groups across Brighton and Hove, Sussex and Surrey. They ensured the food got to 18,480 people every week as either food parcels or cooked meals (sometimes both).

• We worked with 142 volunteers in our warehouses to receive, sort and deliver the food.

• Our volunteers donated 4,996 hours of their time to work with us, ensuring that vulnerable people in food poverty received the food they desperately needed.

• Our employability training programme continued apace and we were able to support 8 people to increase their skills in making applications for work.

• Hassan, one of our long serving volunteers was recognised with a national volunteer award.

• A local artist worked with us to create a series of portraits of some of our volunteers. These are now framed and up on the wall in our volunteers’ kitchen where a local chef volunteers with us every day to create meals out of surplus food for our hungry volunteers as they return from distributing our trays of food across Sussex and Surrey.

• In October, we welcomed our first team of corporate volunteers back into our warehouse to help us sort and deliver food. Thank you Tesco’s. If your businesses is looking to help out in the community by giving your staff time to volunteer – please do get in touch.

• Lurch, our fairly new Iceni E-Cargo Trike is now getting out every day, delivering food to community groups across Brighton and Hove – do give us a wave if you see us around the city.

During July and August, we operated under the social distancing rules as they continued to be relaxed, redistributing as much food as we could. We have welcomed back some of our more vulnerable volunteers who were shielding and waved goodbye to many of our volunteers who worked with us whilst on Covid19 induced furlough.

During these two months, we gave out twice the amount of food we were distributing before the pandemic began. It remains clear to us that the numbers of people in food poverty across the geographical area we serve will continue to be at critical level for some time to come. Whilst our resources remain stretched, we are committed to do all that we can to meet this need.

The national shortage of haulage vehicle drivers across the UK has continued to have an impact on us. We are currently looking at the possibilities of getting food delivered to our warehouse in smaller vehicles that don’t require drivers to have HGV licences. We are working on this with our charity partners and are hoping to have some news about this soon. We are aiming to be able to set up a temporary solution until the UK can train enough drivers to meet the demand for haulage of goods.  During these two months we:  • Redistributed a total of 182 tonnes of food, that is the equivalent of 433,500 meals.

• Provided food for 152 charities and community groups across Brighton and Hove, Sussex and Surrey. They ensured the food got to 18,240 people every week as either food parcels or cooked meals (sometimes both).

• Again, we worked with 135 volunteers in our warehouses to receive, sort and deliver the food.

• Our volunteers donated 4,762 hours of their time to work with us, ensuring that vulnerable people in food poverty received the food they desperately needed.

• Our newly installed freezer was brought up to our operational standards and will soon start to receive frozen food, increasing the options of surplus food we can now deliver – until now we have not been able to receive or redistribute frozen food, so we are anticipating that this will be really beneficial for all the people who get food from us every week.

• Our employability training programme continued apace and we were able to support 6 people to increase their skills in making applications for work.

• Continued to work safely within Government Guidelines for Covid19 using a mixture of PPE, social distancing, personal hygiene and additional cleaning to ensure that everyone stayed safe.

• Continued to train our volunteer crew of food heroes to operate our new Iceni E-Cargo Trike (you may remember we named it Lurch), getting it regularly out on the streets Of Brighton and Hove to deliver food to vulnerable people across our City.

During May and June, we operated under the lockdown rules as they continued to be relaxed, redistributing as much food as we could gather.

During these two months, we gave out just under twice the amount of food we were distributing before the pandemic began. Demand for food exceeded what we could supply, the community groups told us they needed more food but we were unable to get it.

The national shortage of haulage vehicle drivers across the UK, caused in part by Brexit, has been particularly frustrating for us because we were unable to bring the surplus food we were offered to our warehouses in Moulsecoomb, Brighton to give out locally. It is hard for us to see good food go to waste when there are hungry people asking us to provide for them. We have been assured by the haulier industry that more haulage drivers will be trained and recruited in time from within the UK over the next two-year period. We expect that our current food shortages will be repeated from time to time during this time-frame as a result of this.

It is clear now that the numbers of people in food poverty across our geographical location will continue to be at critical level for some time to come. We are doing the best that we can to meet this need. Our resources are stretched, but thanks to our wonderful volunteers we are continuing to do what we can to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

During these two months we:

• Redistributed a total of 177 tonnes of food, that is the equivalent of 393,333 meals.

• Provided food for 156 charities and community groups across Brighton and Hove, Sussex and Surrey. They ensured the food got to 17,511 people every week as either food parcels or cooked meals (sometimes both).

• Worked with 135 volunteers in our warehouses to receive, sort and deliver the food.

• Our volunteers donated 4,812 hours of their time to work with us, ensuring that vulnerable people in food poverty received the food they desperately needed.

• Took delivery of another refrigerated vehicle purchase– bringing the total of vehicles that we own in our fleet up to three and therefore reducing the amount of money we spend on hiring them.

• Our employability training programme opened up again as we were able to support people face to face. Two people far from the workplace were supported with skills enabling them to start applying for jobs again.

• Our 2021 Impact Report was complete and can be viewed on our website here: https://faresharesussex.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FSS-Impact-Report-2021-super-compressed.pdf

• Continued to work safely within Government Guidelines for Covid19 using a mixture of PPE, social distancing, personal hygiene and additional cleaning to ensure that everyone stayed safe.

• Bought our new Iceni E-Cargo Trike (affectionately named Lurch), setting up training sessions with our volunteers to ensure their safety whilst delivering food locally by bike – and of course reducing our carbon emissions.