A GRANT of almost £30,000 has been award to a charity to support people who are locked in poverty.

The Trussell Trust food bank in Durham has received the money from Asda’s Fight Hunger Create Change partnership.

The new grant funding will allow food banks across the country to provide services to people at the point of crisis.

From supplying emergency food parcels to providing on-site debt and money advice, the grants will allow the food banks to hire specialist advisers, create additional storage space and increase work to help those people facing poverty.

Stuart Hudson, manager of Durham Foodbank, said: “Here at Durham Foodbank, we are thrilled to receive such a generous donation from Asda.

“The money has helped us to pay the provision of a debt advice service for clients across five foodbank centres for a year.

“Having a specialist advisor at hand will be a huge help to our users, and we hope that this will help us improve more lives.

“It’s lovely that a large company such as Asda is committed to helping the local community of their branches.”

Over three years, the partnership will help provide even more support to people referred to food banks, fund a three-year research project into the drivers of food bank use, provide an additional 24 million meals every year as well as one million fresh food parcels to people across the UK.

Andy Murray, chief customer officer, of Asda, said: “We’ll continue to provide not just meals for people but support to help them out of poverty.”