TETBURY Lions has contributed £1,200 over the last 12 months to the local Foodbank.

The amount raised from the Lions' project, which runs alongside the existing trolley collection service that has been operating in the Tetbury Tesco store, was a much larger total than originally anticipated.

Over the Christmas period, the club's project ensured that fifteen families in Tetbury provided their children with a much better festive period.

The Tetbury Lions donations have totalled just over 300kg since April 2017.

The club has now agreed to increase the budget for the local Foodbank by 50 per cent to £1,800 for the coming year.

Rachel Brindley, manager of the Foodbank, was delighted with the commitment and generosity of the Lions Club, saying: “We are very grateful for the wonderful support offered to us by the Tetbury Lions. We appreciate the ongoing generosity in enabling us to continue to support the local community in Tetbury.”

The Foodbank in Tetbury was born out of a growing need to support local people in crisis. It is a charity, run managed and operated solely by volunteers and is one of three Foodbank centres operated from Cirencester under the Trussell Trust umbrella.

The Tetbury centre was established in April 2016 following statistics that showed that 15 per cent of all households in the town are over 65 and live on their own and that 4 per cent of households are single parents with dependent children.

There are many reasons why the Foodbank is used, including benefit changes and delays, sickness, redundancy, change in family circumstances and very low incomes.

Since opening in April 2016, the Foodbank in Tetbury has made nearly 1,500 donations to people in need.