Halifax school cooks up hundreds of meals to ease living costs

Volunteers work daily to cook and serve up the meals

A school is providing hundreds of meals a week to help families struggling with rising living costs.

Halifax Academy has repurposed a disused kitchen to cook food grown by pupils in the school garden.

A team of volunteers serve up about 300 meals a week which are given to parents and the wider community on a pay-as-you-feel basis.

Fiona Black, from the academy, said: "Food used to be a joy but now it can be a burden."

The project was first started to help people through the Covid pandemic but demand has remained high.

Food from the garden is cooked up alongside donated produce

Ms Black, the school's communities and partnerships officer, said: "If you're not on a high wage then you think about food all the time.

"With the cost of living, if you're worried about putting heat on over food, then parents will go without before they ever let their kids go without."

The school works with local grocery stores to provide fruit and vegetables, which supplement the produce harvested from the kitchen garden .

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To help ease pressures on parents over the summer holidays, it is also providing food parcels for the most vulnerable as well as food vouchers for all its families.

Teacher Glynn Eastwood said some families would be able to access the school garden over the holiday period and "help themselves to fruit and veg".

He added: "Everyone is feeling the cost of living crisis so if we want to help alleviate that in anyway possible."