Volunteers manning a foodbank in Huddersfield look set to smash all records for the help they give.

They expect to hand out a staggering 10,000 food parcels this year as demand soars from every community in the town.

In 2013 The Welcome Centre, a charity based at the Huddersfield Methodist Mission, handed out more than 8,400 food packs. During 2003 it gave out less than a thousand – 797 to be precise.

Now demand for their assistance is growing by the day.

A campaign to tackle hunger in the UK has been stepped up as new figures revealed a huge increase in the amount of emergency supplies being handed out from foodbanks.

The Trussell Trust said its centres gave out three days’ emergency food in excess of 600,000 times between April and December last year, more than in the entire previous financial year.

Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam estimated that more than half a million people were helped by food banks in 2012/13.

The statistics were published as 20 charities called on the Government to act on the “national crisis” of “hunger returning to Britain”.

Recent changes to the benefits system have helped fuel the demand for help in Huddersfield.

Mrs Tina Skeldon, project manager at the Huddersfield centre, said: “We certainly expect to top 10,000 parcels this year, which is another big increase on what we did last year.

“ It is across every facet of society, from elderly people to families

“The big changes to the benefits system have hit people hard. Officials are clamping down on benefit claims and that often leaves people without cash for days or even weeks on end, and they turn to us.

“We operate the service five days a week and have set up two phone lines to handle the calls from the 40 or so agencies who make referrals to us.

“Everyone we help is referred to us from many different sources, including Kirklees Council, doctors, health services and drug and alcohol advice services”.

But the demand is adding to problems. Mrs Skeldon said the centre was rapidly running out of many food items.

People in Huddersfield are so very generous and over Christmas we had a large number of donations.

“We also have local churches who do collections for us and every few weeks they arrange for an online shop to come direct to us. But we always need more”.

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