Telford food project celebrates move to new premises
A charitable project that provides people in serious need with surplus supermarket food has celebrated its first birthday by opening the doors on its new home.
The Food Share Project, part of the Connect Aid CIC, has moved to an 8,000 sq ft retail unit at Rampart Court, Telford, after agreeing a lease deal with national property and commercial investment company LCP, which owns and manages the retail park there.
The project, founded on September 20 last year by Lea Beven, had been operating on a pop-up basis to hand out food to those in food poverty around Shropshire and in Willenhall. That was until the coronavirus lockdown, when the Park Lane Centre in Woodside offered its newly-empty rooms as a temporary base for food storage and administration.
When it was obvious that centre would be opening again, the volunteers had to find a new home fast. The team feared that they would be left without a base and would have to drastically cut back on the amounts they could provide.
That was until reaching the deal with LCP at Rampart Court, at the former Staples building.
Lea Beven said: “Moving to Rampart Court means we are able to open a pallet warehouse, which will offer discounted food for people on low incomes. This will enable people to come in and donate whatever they feel they can for the food they pick up, which will supplement our pop-up events for which people receive bags of nutritious food for a service charge £2 per person, which covers the costs of transportation and storage.
Grateful
“We’ve very grateful to LCP for contacting us about this space and offering very favourable terms because it means we have a proper home for the foreseeable future and can do even more to help people.”
Simon Eatough, senior asset manager at LCP, said: “The Food Share project is a superb scheme and we were only too pleased to contact them about the unit at Rampart Court. As a property company that prides itself on working within the local convenience parade sector, we understand only too well about the need to have good-quality facilities on people’s doorsteps.”
The Food Share Project, which has just received its five-star hygiene certificate, has about 85 volunteers.
