Community / Foodbank manager ‘very concerned’ by number of people requiring support
NEARLY 1,100 food parcels have been distributed in Shetland over the last year, Shetland Foodbank manager David Grieve has said.
A fifth of those were given to families, with almost 1,600 people in Shetland benefitting from the parcels.
Of that figure 298 were children under the age of 16, Grieve said.
The Trussell Trust, a non-government organisation working to end the need for foodbanks in the UK, said that just under 240,000 food parcels had been distributed in Scotland between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.
However that was down slightly on the figure from 2023/24, when 264,778 parcels were handed out.
Grieve said that in Shetland the number of parcels being distributed had remained steady when compared to the previous year, rising only slightly from 1,088 to 1,098.
With 75 per cent of the packages going to people on low income or in debt, Grieve said he was still “very concerned” by the number of people Shetland Foodbank was having to support.
Many of those, around 40 per cent, live out with Lerwick, he said.
“In many parts of the country foodbanks are struggling to meet the demands they face,” Grieve said.
“In the west of Scotland, around Glasgow, a rising number of people are looking for help from foodbanks and some of those foodbanks don’t have sufficient stocks of food to meet the needs of their local community.
“Shetland Foodbank is however still able to meet the demands made on it as the support received from across Shetland remains very generous.”
Grieve said that a quote on a recent foodbank publicity poster said that hunger was not a food problem but “an income problem”.
“When a single unemployed adult is expected to live on less than £100 a week, there is definitely something wrong with the social security system in our country,” he added.
“And in Shetland, where living costs are higher, that £100 is stretched even further.”
The Trussell Trust said that 2.9 million emergency food parcels had been given to people in need over the last year across the UK, with more than a million of those going to children.
It said this was equivalent to a parcel every 11 seconds, and a 51 per cent rise on the same figure five years ago.
Trussell Trust chief executive Emma Revie said a whole generation of people had now grown up in a country where sustained levels of foodbank use “feel like the norm”.
“This should be a massive wake-up call to government and a stark reminder of their responsibilities to the people of this country.
“It is clear that the public’s cost of living fears are far from over, and these numbers show why.
“If the UK government truly wants to improve public services, boost the economy and make the UK a better place to live, then addressing hunger and hardship must be a priority.”
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