Andrew Roberts
Trumpington Food Hub was established in May 2020, in response to the Covid pandemic and the challenges being faced by residents. It continued to June 2024 and from July 2024 will be restructured as the Fairbite Food Club Trumpington. This page summarises the work of the Food Hub and recognises the contributions made by staff, volunteers and funders.
Vision
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, March-April 2020, Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Sustainable Food (CSF) and local residents’ groups identified the need to provide practical support to residents. At that time, there was restricted access to supermarkets and shops; many people were in financial difficulties including working restricted hours or being on furlough; many residents were vulnerable to infection; and public facilities such as schools and activities in community centres were severely curtailed.
The initial vision for the food hub was a response to Covid-19, establishing a local service providing food and toiletries free of charge to residents who self-identified as being in need of support, supplementing the food supplies which they could purchase from their own resources.
From 2022-23, the emphasis of the service changed from a Covid response to helping people who were being impacted by increases in the cost of living. The need continued into 2024 and beyond.
Coordination
The initial drive for a food distribution hub came from a small group including Councillor Katie Thornburrow (then the Trumpington city councillor) and Claude Grewal-Sultze, with support from City Council officers including Vicky Haywood. In discussions with Andrew Roberts on behalf of the Trumpington Residents’ Association (TRA), it was agreed that Trumpington Pavilion was an ideal base and the TRA (then managing the Pavilion) added its support.
Similar food hubs were already active or were newly established in other parts of Cambridge, giving a network of eight hubs. These worked in parallel with the longer-established food banks, which provided emergency food supplies to residents meeting specific criteria. The local Food Bank in Christ Church, Alpha Terrace, closed at the start of the pandemic but reopened in September 2020.
In April 2020, there was a real concern about the risk of Covid infections and the practicality of using the Pavilion. The initial idea was to establish a food distribution service, with volunteers making up food parcels and taking these to vulnerable residents. This quickly evolved into a plan for regular sessions to be held at the Pavilion but with strong Covid precautions in place, such as controlling the number of people in the hall at any one time, a clear separation between users and the stock and volunteers, with volunteers using masks, gowns and sanitiser, and a cleaning regime. The Pavilion was closed to other users in this period.
Trumpington Food Hub was initially open on Tuesdays and Fridays, from 12 noon to 3 pm, with the first session being held on 5 May 2020. The main source of food supplies was CSF. As the initial phase of the pandemic eased in the autumn of 2020, it was agreed that the Food Hub continued to provide a valuable role but it could be scaled back to opening only on Fridays from September 2020 and the hours were later changed to 12 noon to 1:30 pm. This enabled the Pavilion to reopen to a limited number of other users during the rest of the week, including sessions of the youth group. CSF agreed to continue to supply food.
The hall was used as the main facility, with tables arranged around three sides, with volunteers behind the tables. In the initial period, users followed a one-way route from the front to the rear of the hall, to see what food was available and be passed food by the volunteers.
The first phase of work was coordinated by the core group of volunteers led by Katie Thornburrow and Claude Grewal-Sultze, with support from Jackie Covill (then the Assistant Manager at the Pavilion). In October 2020, the TRA received a grant from the City Council to support the continuation of the Food Hub to March 2021. This and subsequent funding enabled the TRA to appoint Jackie Covill as the coordinator from November 2020 to May 2021. Smita Botre was then appointed as coordinator from June 2021 to March 2022. During this period, CSF was able to provide additional funding to extend the work to include additional hours to give more support for users, such as recipe packs, and more outreach. Sue-Ellen Beadle fulfilled the coordinator role from April 2022 to October 2023, with help from Emma Buck (then the Manager and Assistant Manager at the Pavilion). Smita Botre again took over from October 2023 to March 2024. These coordinators organised the volunteer rotas, ordered food supplies, liaised with CSF, produced monitoring reports for CSF, arranged publicity and organised the sessions on Fridays. At different phases in the project, the coordinator had 5, 8 or 10 hours a week to commit to the work. The overall project was managed by Andrew Roberts for the TRA.
The Food Hub was publicised through local contacts, messages on social media and the local Covid-19 Network and the TRA. A flyer was produced in spring 2020 to raise awareness and this was followed by another in spring 2021.
The operation of the Food Hub was made possible by an excellent group of regular volunteers, who set up the hall and received supplies in the mornings and then helping the users during the open hours. In 2023, an average of 12 volunteers helped each week.
A representative of Cambridge Water attended the sessions on a regular basis, to give advice to local residents.
Funding
From May 2020 to March 2024, the TRA received support for the Food Hub from a wide range of grants and donations. This included grants from Cambridge City Council (including government funds), South Trumpington Parish Meeting, South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge Sustainable Food, AstraZeneca and the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust. The TRA also received financial donations from local individuals, charities and companies, including a Cambridge Sustainable Food fundraising campaign, Trumpington Parochial Charity, Masonic charities (the Alma Mater Lodge), Grosvenor, South Staffordshire Water and Clay Farm Foods. Given the personal donations, the TRA was also able to receive an input from gift aid. The income was matched by expenditure on staff, locally purchased supplies and the hire of the Pavilion. The total budget was over £45,000 from May 2020 to March 2024.
Stock
The stock for the Food Hub came through a number of sources. Throughout the period, CSF was a primary source, with weekly deliveries of tinned food and vegetables which they had purchased or received as donations from supermarkets and a community farm, CoFarm Cambridge. In addition, CSF volunteers visited a number of supermarkets across Cambridge and delivered surplus food to the network of food hubs on the day the hub was open. The TRA added to this stock with a weekly supermarket purchase of tinned food, fruit and vegetables, initially spending £150 a week and later £200 or £250 a week. The TRA also had an arrangement with the Sainsburys Local store on Trumpington Meadows to collect surplus bread and pastries on Friday mornings. Other important sources included fresh vegetables from the local allotments and community garden, a regular collection of donated food by a local estate agent, Cooke & Curtis, individual donations from local residents and churches, and donations in a number of collection boxes. The Food Hub also received a weekly contribution of home baked items such as cupcakes and tray bakes, brought to the session by a local family.
As the outcome of these purchases and donations, the availability of supplies varied from week to week. It included tinned food (tuna, tomatoes, vegetables, soups), pasta and rice, cereals, dairy (eggs or milk or cheese), tea and occasionally coffee, fresh vegetables (depending on the season, typically potatoes, carrots, onions, swedes, greens, etc.), fruit (typically apples, oranges, bananas, etc.), bread, pastries and toiletries (typically toilet rolls, toothpaste, etc.). Families were able to have one, two or three carrier bags of goods, depending on the number of adults and children in the group.
There was a rapid throughput, with most stock used in the week it was received, although some non-perishable supplies were carried forward from one week to the next. Surplus perishable food was taken to a local address and displayed on a table outside the house, for residents to help themselves in return for making a small donation, which was then used to purchase further stock.
The Food Hub was fortunate to have additional supplies on a number of occasions, such as the sessions before Christmas 2022 and 2023, with extra food and Christmas gifts supplied by CSF and others.
Users
The Food Hub worked on the basis that an individual adult family would attend the session on behalf of their family, with the size of the families varying from one adult up to four adults and up to seven children. During the Covid period, other members of a family were dissuaded from coming into the building but there was more flexibility from 2022, with youngsters sometimes coming with an adult.
A few snapshots of user numbers.
In the first months of operation in 2020, the twice weekly sessions of the Food Hub supported an average of 67 adults and 48 children. In early 2021 when there were weekly sessions, there were fluctuations in the figures but the number averaged around 80 adults and 80 children, plus up to 15 deliveries to local homes. The numbers were lower in autumn 2021, averaging 60 adults and 45 children. They increased again in 2022, with an average of around 90 adults and 60 children per week (45 families). Through 2023, the Food Hub was open for 49 weeks, with an average of 85 adults and 48 children (41 families). The Christmas session on 22 December 2023 had 121 adults and 71 children (58 families). There was a similar pattern in the first three months of 2024, with a weekly average of 86 adults and 44 children (40 families).
Users were asked to give their post code and based on this information it was estimated in 2023 that 92.5% came from Trumpington ward and other parts of Cambridge and the remainder from the surrounding parishes including South Trumpington. A number of the users had arrived in the UK from other countries in recent years, with regular attendees from Syria and Ukraine. A high proportion of the users were regular attendees.
Visits
A few weeks after the Food Hub opening, it was visited by the then Mayor of Cambridge, Councillor Russ McPherson. In May 2021, there was a visit by Daniel Zeichner MP.
Food Resilience Outreach Project
From June 2021 to March 2022, Smita Botre did additional work to develop contacts with CSF and local groups, including allotments and the community garden, and to support users. Users were also asked to complete a questionnaire, to give the project background information about their cooking facilities and interests. Smita produced a number of recipe cards and food packs with the items needed to produce the recipes and these were distributed to users. She organised a pumpkin festival as part of one of the weekly sessions on 29 October 2021, with multiple examples of recipes based on pumpkins and squash and a ‘grow your own food’ table led by Dave Fox from the Trumpington Allotment Society.
Evolution from Food Hub to Fairbite Food Club
In autumn 2023, the TRA concluded that it could not continue to be responsible for the Food Hub after March 2024. This coincided with new approaches being developed by the City Council, CSF and Cambridge City Food Bank (CCFb), less availability of grants and the TRA passing the management of the Pavilion to the City Council. Fortunately, CCFb offered to take over responsibility for the service. This came into operation from April 2024, with CCFb continuing to run the Food Hub at the Pavilion on a similar basis to the previous service for an interim period. From July 2024, the service will become the Fairbite Food Club Trumpington, with continued support for local residents, as part of a city-wide network. The CCFb initiative in Trumpington has been led by Jenny Bright and Dr Liam Loftus and they have appointed Patrick Brown as Coordinator. This development recognised the continued need for support to residents.
