About Rochdale Foodbank

Our food bank is a project founded by local churches and community groups, working together towards stopping hunger in our local area.

We started our food bank in 2012 with £400 and 6 people and we expanded quickly. At first we had no idea how big we would grow or how much food we would need. Trussell Trust told us we should start with 3 tonnes of food – so we started collecting at the Feelgood Festival that year.

Premises was our next hurdle: we were offered an unused nightclub in the town centre but unfortunately we couldn’t afford the rent, the landlord reduced the rent for us but we still didn’t have the money needed. A Christian couple then graciously offered to pay our rent for 6 months until we got funding in place – Rochdale Council now kindly help us with the rent.

So, here we are 9 years on, we are now open 5 days a week from 11am to 12:45pm and we have over 100 volunteer staff.

We are a well run and organised unit, we have a great set of volunteers who work hard and have fun too – we couldn’t do it without them, or without the great generosity of the people of Rochdale who help us in so many ways.

We might be the only person a client speaks to in a day – they may need encouragement or a listening ear, or just to know that someone cares about them.

Devastating Boxing Day flood 2015

Boxing Day 2015 saw a major disaster for many people and businesses in Rochdale.

Days of persistent rain in the surrounding area caused river levels to rise to the point at which they could no longer cope with the amount of water – and finally gave in.

Flood waters rose and engulfed many shops and businesses within the town centre. Rochdale Foodbank was caught right in the centre of it. South Parade and all the properties in the vicinity were deluged by flood water as the river level rose.

‘The Pacific’ was our main foodbank reception. Our warehouse took the main brunt of the flood water with water levels rising over 2 feet. Our warehouse suffered the worst food damage, inside the warehouse 7 tonnes of food was damaged and would need to be destroyed. Destroyed food was loaded into skips – kindly donated by Rochdale Council. Staff, and what remained of our usable stock, temporarily moved into the Town Hall so we could continue business whilst the warehouse was cleaned and repaired.

We were helped by Rochdale Round Table who kindly donated £1,000 from their Christmas Cash and Can Collection and the Rochdale Freemasons who also gave us £1,000. These donations helped us cope with increased costs incurred during the flood. Our deepest thanks go to all who went out of their way during this period to help us. We moved into our warehouse on 11th January 2016 to use as our main reception whilst work then started to clean and repair our original home at no. 8 South Parade. After cleaning work, on 18th April 2016 Rochdale Foodbank finally moved back into no. 8 South Parade – our original premises.