MORE than £32,000 has been secured in grant funding by a Tyne Valley community hub.

The Miner’s Lamp in Prudhoe has secured six grants worth £32,739 to help respond to the impact of coronavirus on the community.

The hub received £10,000 from Martin Lewis' charity fund, £9,500 from the National Lottery Awards for All, while £9,389 was provided by Defra’s WRAP initiative.

In addition, Prudhoe Town Council provided £3,000, and Karbon Homes gifted £1,000, along with £400 from Neighbourly.

Russ Greig, a trustee at the Miner’s Lamp, explained what the money would be used for.

He said: “With the funding we’ve been able to increase capacity of our food redistribution, the WRAP funding which we’ve just secured is to help us purchase more fridges and freezers so we can help to redistribute more food to our community. Since the start of the crisis we’ve redistributed nearly 9,000kg of food which would have gone to landfill

“Funding from National Lottery has allowed us to purchase our own vehicle so we can continue our work. We’ve been really lucky with the use of a van loaned by Sherwoods Motor Group, but appreciate that as their business reopened some weeks ago the van would need to be returned.”

The hub has experienced a surge in demand since the start of the pandemic, with many families needing support.

Russ continued: “We expect to see increased demand on our food bank as a result of children being off school placing increased demand on household finances. The Covid-19 crisis has just highlighted his many families including working families life on a knifes edge of food poverty and insecurity.

“We’re the only organisation in Prudhoe which has secured such investment in our community to help people through the crisis and its after effects. At the start of the crisis, we were struck with a dilemma, we saw a massive increase in demand for support through our food bank, but our stocks were very low.

“ Due to panic buying but consumers we weren’t getting the donations of food coming in, but also we just didn’t have the funds to purchase food. So we started our fund-raising campaign and were overwhelmed by support from our community who have helped us raise nearly £6,000. “