A new food hub set up to make sure no one goes hungry in Wycombe has moved to a permanent store.

The Wycombe Food Hub (WFH) is now based at the old Works store in the Chiltern Shopping Centre and started serving people who need its services on September 7.

The WFH came about at the start of lockdown and volunteers collect leftover and ambient food from local supermarkets.

The food is usually short-dated, expired 'best before end' dates or with damaged packaging, but all products are still useable.

During the peak of lockdown, the WFH was collecting more than 200 crates of food each week and supplying food to partner organisations who were using the produce to create 100 cooked meals every week.

They are now collecting over 300 crates a week and have stopped supplying cooked meals but are offering chilled and frozen food instead.

In a special opening ceremony at their new unit in the town centre, Cllr Arif Hussain, who is chairman of the newly-formed Wycombe Community Board, attended, along with Reverend Ant Lee from The Pastures Church, Imam Haseeb Jhangir from Micklefield Mosque and Phil Elliott from the Chilterns Shopping Centre and some volunteers.

The hub was created by former town mayors Cllr Khalil Ahmed and Trevor Snaith.

Reverend Lee said lockdown highlighted the "already existing problems that were exacerbated by the pandemic and made the community come together to come up with innovative ways to help vulnerable people", while Imam Jhangir said the hub was an "excellent initiative".

A number of companies and organisations have helped the food hub so far, including Shanly Homes, Your Print Solution, Biffa, Khepera CIC, FareShare, Jimmy’s Pizza, Papa John’s Pizza, Wesley Methodist Church, High Wycombe Social Club, The Chilterns Shopping Centre, HWBidco, Lidl, Morrisons, Aldi, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Waitrose and The Pastures Church.

The WFH will initially run on Mondays and Thursdays from midday until 2pm, but will hopefully extend to Monday, Wednesday and Friday in future.

Anyone who wants to find out more, donate or help with the food hub can go to www.wycombefoodhub.org/volunteer or facebook.com/wycombefoodhub.