A FOOD champion has been appointed in Falmouth to help the growing number of people who have difficulty putting food on the table during the cost of living crisis.

At a meeting of the town council last week, councillors voted to appoint Cllr Jayne Kirkham as its food champion after she brought a motion on the cost of living crisis to fellow councillors.

She called on fellow councillors to commit to food justice in Falmouth by appointing a food justice champion to lead on tackling food poverty locally, recognises and thanks the Falmouth Food Co-Op and others and supports work to set up a food partnership in the town.

Proposing the motion Cllr Kirkham said it would be good to have someone at the council in co-ordinating with these bodies to see if they are getting enough help.

"We already have some very good work going on in Falmouth," she said. "The churches are incredible, community fridges, what's going on at the Dracaena Centre, people helping to deliver food to people who are homeless during the evening. A lot of really good work goes on here. But it would be good to have a co-ordinating role to see if there is enough or to fill in any gaps.

"Five years ago I did a spot of volunteering at a food bank in Penryn. What I found I mostly ended up doing was driving people home. They would walk from Falmouth pick up their box and then they couldn't get home. While it's great what Highway Church, Penryn are doing, is that enough? We need something more local to Falmouth. We could start by assessing what we have and work out if there are any gaps we could we fill by doing something like that."

She said she had spoken to the Trussel Trust and FareShare and had started making those inroads just to see if it was possible to do that.

"We need volunteers to run it," she said. "We are looking at a difficult winter. We will start to need preparing for it and if we don't there will be so many people that will need help and we won't be set up."

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Supporting the motion Cllr Jude Robinson said it was "absolutely essential" Cllr Kirkham was given the council's support.

"It is something really urgent that the council gets behind now," she said. "It should be something that's on all our minds. I'm sure most of us made some calculations about the cost of living crisis and energy bills and the shock of the implications of it, but most of us will be alright but I dread to think what it is like for some families in Falmouth."

Councillors voted to appoint Cllr Kirkham as its food champion.