On Monday, February 1, Devon charity Project Food, moved into new premises at Axminster Hospital.

Formerly known as Health and Local Food for Families (HALFF), Project Food provides food education to local people.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the charity has been providing crucial free meal deliveries services to over 40 families and individuals struggling to obtain healthy meals.

More than 50 children on Free School Meals have benefited from Project Food’s meal delivery services while schools were closed, with the charity not just delivering in Axminster, but to all the surrounding villages as well as Bridport, Chard, Seaton, and Honiton.

Project Food has also supported around 100 households with deliveries of nutritious ready meals and vegetable boxes to mostly elderly people living alone who have been shielding or self-isolating.

In addition to food delivery services, Project Food has been reaching out to local people with their online cooking sessions, aimed at bringing them together and demonstrating how they can cook and eat a healthier diet, even if they are unable to get out.

After lockdown restrictions are eased, the Project Food team intends to run community cooking courses at the site to teach vulnerable local people to prepare nutritious food in their own homes.

The move comes after recent reconfiguration works undertaken at the hospital by the property’s landlord, NHS Property Services (NHSPS) and the Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust highlighted disused space in a kitchen area in the main building.

NHSPS have invested in the work to create a modern and fit for purpose space for Project Food’s use.

The new kitchen will enable Project Food to expand its important meal delivery operations in a COVID-safe and socially distanced manner, with increased floor space.

The improved facilities available to the charity will also allow them to take larger groups for the cookery classes that they run for local people to promote nutritional awareness.

Tiggy Parry, Director at Project Food said: “We are absolutely delighted with the kitchen space in Axminster Hospital and are very grateful to NHS Property Services and the RD&E for giving Project Food the opportunity to use this space for the benefit of the local community. It will help us to help many more people to have better physical and mental health through a healthier diet."