MORE than 500 people have used the Droitwich Spa Foodbank over the past year, a figure which is higher than average per head of population than for the UK as a whole.

512 people received three days of emergency food supplies over the 2014-15 financial year from the Droitwich foodbank, which is organised through Droitwich Churches Together and the Trussell Trust.

The foodbank has just completed its first year in operation serving a population of roughly 23,500 people across Droitwich.

Comparatively across the UK as a whole, in the same time period just over a million people used Trussell Trust foodbanks.

This translates as 2.18 per cent of the population in Droitwich using the service, compared to 1.77 per cent across the whole of the UK.

The number of people using foodbanks in general has risen dramatically over the past five years from 40,898 in 2009-10 to 1,084,604 in 2014-15.

Trussell Trust UK foodbank director Adrian Curtis said: "Despite welcome signs of economic recovery, hunger continues to affect significant numbers of men, women and children in the UK today. It’s difficult to be sure of the full extent of the problem as Trussell Trust figures don’t include people who are helped by other food charities or those who feel too ashamed to seek help."

At the Droitwich foodbank, 30 per cent of people were referred because of delays in receiving their benefits, 14 per cent were referred because of changes to their benefits, and 18 per cent were referred because of people being on low incomes, with 11.25 tonnes of food being donated over the past year by everyone from individual donors to local schools, businesses, and faith groups.

Out of the 512 people given three days worth of emergency food by the Droitwich Spa foodbank, 189 of them were children.