Sainsbury's Halstead

We have been allowed to use a small building in the centre of the town by a local businessman to house the fridge. The local East of England co-op has funded half the cost of our fridge. A local sign company has made us a banner free of charge. We have all the local supermarkets and cafes on board and we launched on 13 August 2018 Any uneaten or inedible food that we have is taken to a pig farmer who is grateful for the extra food for his pigs.. We are inspected for Hygiene by Braintree District council, and recently satisfactorily completed their Hygiene questionnaire. In January we welcomed a group of year 6 pupils from the local Holy Trinity school to the fridge, in order for them to learn about the fridge and its aim of preventing food waste. This was reported in the local paper. Last spring I gave a talk on the fridge and its work to the local Rotary club and this was much appreciated and resulted in a donation. We are now part of a body of local charities and voluntary organisations in the town who are working more closely together. These include the Rotary, the Mensshed, choirs, dementia friendly organisations, and many others. There is a get together for all these groups on 7/4/25 at the Annual Town meeting, where local residents can discuss what the town needs.

St Andrews Still Good to Eat is a food intervention project, redirecting food from shops, wholesalers, other retailers and producers etc., which would normally have gone to landfill back into the community, also assisting local residents with stretched food budgets, whilst reducing food miles and reducing waste, assisting with local waste management plans. We do not provide food to be eaten on the premises, or food prepared by SGTE, we supply a limited amount of pre-prepared packaged foods, both chilled and ambient. St Andrews Still Good to Eat (SGTE) operates in cooperation with St Andrews Church (Church of England, a charity exempt by law), Great Cornard, Sudbury Suffolk, at their premises. It has its own constitution (including stated aims and objectives) and management committee, but operates under the Church of England policies and insurance etc., linked to the church. St Andrews Church Council (PCC) and SGTE's own management committee provide oversight and we further operate under the guidance of local Environmental Health Officers. We are not a food bank, no referral or reference is required to visit us, all are welcome. We have our own dedicated, locked, storage area and our own, locked, commercial refrigeration unit. Our storage and refrigeration facilities are temperature and humidity level monitored, and we record and inspect all our deliveries, collections and disposals. We are open every Thursday between 10am and 12 noon, and only close for three weeks in the summer and two weeks at Christmas/new year, unless circumstances dictate otherwise. We assist around 75 individuals/families each week and have over 600 followers on out FaceBook page where we provide money saving and dietary information, recipes, and information from and about the local food bank and a wide range of other social projects. Member contribution/self help is highly encouraged. We provide information from #FoodSavvy, Suffolk County Council and Babergh District Council on our FaceBook page and whilst open in written format. We are strictly not for profit and all of our organisers and helpers are volunteers. We request a weekly voluntary donation from our service users, which covers our running costs of heating, lighting, refrigeration and unavoidable storage, hygiene and transport costs, there are no other membership fees or any other costs to service users. We are however assisted in our running and set up costs by kind personal donations, local council grants, the Princes Trust grants, Sudbury Lands Trust grants, and other assistance from Ballingdon House, Sudbury. Our partnership with St Andrews Church greatly reduces our costs and liabilities, to the benefit of all in the area. Our financial and operating position is sound.

The Fields Association is a residents’ association run by a group of volunteers from local communities, formed to respond to inappropriate and unsympathetic overdevelopment of the North Essex countryside. Along side this we have set up a community pantry. There is a need for support in our community and the pantry has been well used. We are also encouraging people to waste less food and share any excess food they may have with the community before throwing away. We have an area in Wethersfield Church where we put all the food it is open 9am to 4pm daily. Anyone is welcome to use the pantry and we advertise on the local FB pages and have posters around the village. We also put information in the parish/church newsletter. There is no charge for the service. We get food from local people who have excess and 2 local village stores if and when they have spare food. Being a rural area it is hard for people to get to the main town food banks so we are hoping to help those people out. The transport links to the village are not very good at all. It has been well used so far and we are hoping to be able to continue to offer this service with neighbourlys help. It is difficult to say how many people have used the service but we have had messages of thanks stating how this has helped them in this hard economic time. We are also on Braintree District Council list of places for people to get help if needed. The FB link is one of the local groups we post information on. We do not have a separate FB page. We have an email address: Community-pantry@outlook.com