The 'no questions asked' food bank in one of Hull's most deprived wards

"It's for the really rough weeks, for families who have had to reapply for Universal Credit, or maybe they have been made newly redundant and have to live off fresh air in the meantime"

05:00, 14 Oct 2024

[Lesley is a volunteer at St Philip's Food Community in Hull]

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Lesley is a volunteer at St Philip's Food Community in Hull(Image: Hull Live)

A community in Hull is breaking down barriers with its promise to provide food in a crisis without needing any "proof" from a doctor or social worker.

St Philip's Food Community in Amethyst Road, Bilton Grange, has been operating since the lockdown in 2020. It's run by General Manager Kia Macpherson, who is also the wife of the vicar at St Philip's, Reverand Aian Macpherson.

Kia predicts the cost of living crisis will only get worse and says many people in Marfleet Ward - one of Hull's poorest constituencies - are living on a shoestring budget so it takes just one crisis to tip them into food poverty.

She said: "We have a standard policy that everyone's first visit is free. Then four times a year they can claim from the pantry without any donation at all, no questions asked.

"It's for the really rough weeks, for families who have had to reapply for Universal Credit, or maybe they have been made newly redundant and have to live off fresh air in the meantime.

[Kia Macpherson who is general manager of St Philip's Food Community in Amethyst Road]

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Kia Macpherson who is general manager of St Philip's Food Community in Amethyst Road(Image: Sofie Jackson for Hull Live)

"It's for the weeks where the freezer breaks and the kids need new shoes and it all happens at once. Or Mum goes into hospital and suddenly you need to find money for bus fares to get in and out of the hospital. It's things like that where crisis interrupts normal cash flow."

Kia said while she respects the Trussel Trust style of food banks, she believes it is important for people to be able to get food in an emergency without needing to fill in forms. She said: "People here have enough barriers without having to obtain things like vouchers, a note from their doctor, or their social worker, or whatever it happens to be.

[Store cupboard essentials are offered alongside sweet treats and fresh fruit and vegetables]

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Store cupboard essentials are offered alongside sweet treats and fresh fruit and vegetables(Image: Hull Live)

"What the Trussell Trust does is exceptional but it isn't what we wanted to create here. First and foremost, we facilitate community and that doesn't facilitate community, it is a service.

"The problem we have found is that people were facing issues much more complicated than that. There was no normal. A fixed number of food parcels is not going to support that family sufficiently, so we decided we weren't going to follow that model for what we wanted to achieve here."

Kia explained that research by Kellogs in 2018 named Marfleet Ward "one of the five most profound food deserts in the country" She said: "A food desert is a place where per head of population there is a drastic shortage of quality low-cost food. It is a contributor to obesity and poor health outcomes."

[Fresh fruit and vegetables at St Philip's Food Community in Hull]

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Fresh fruit and vegetables at St Philip's Food Community in Hull(Image: Sofie Jackson for Hull Live)

Since then, the area has lost its local Co-op which had a knock-on effect on the other small shops. Kia claimed the loss of the Co-op was directly linked to the subsequent loss of the greengrocer and butcher because people could no longer get all their food shopping at the Greenwich Avenue shops.

Kia said the problems people face, from poverty, to grief, to ill-health, to trauma, mean "folks in our community are not more than a handshake away from issues like addiction."

"Those things affect the whole family, they don't just affect the person who is the addict," she said. "We do have addicts here but they are the tiny minority."

Kia said St Philip's Food Community currently has 540 households on its live list this year. That means 1,500 people and she said 38% of those people are children.

The solution, she said, lies in communities like the one she and the volunteers have built and continue to strengthen. "We have to learn to be a community because that's quite counter-cultural these days.

"We have forgotten how to be a community and we don't know our neighbors like we used to maybe 30 years ago. People are rightly protectionist in an age where there is a lot of fear flying about.

"We have got wars around the world, economic crisis, changing governments. We have lots of reasons to feel afraid. But we feel less afraid if we are together."

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If you need food in a crisis, St Philip's Food Community can be reached via the church's Facebook page. You can also text or WhatsApp on 07929 733555.

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