Fairlie Parish Church’s harvest service recently collected many hundreds of items for the North Ayrshire foodbank.

The village church intends to have a permanent collection basket at the back of the church, which is open regularly, but notably on Thursday mornings and early Thursday evenings.

A number of members who helped to deliver the recent donations to Ardrossan took the opportunity to see around the centre.

Based at the Church of the Nazarene in Ardrossan, the foodbank sorts all donated items and boxes them up, suitably sized, for distribution to either single people or families.

These are then distributed via 12 hubs in the area covering Largs, Fairlie, Dalry, Kilbirnie, the Three Towns (Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston), Kilwinning and Irvine.

In order to qualify, recipients must have a form provided by an approved agency, including police, social services or doctors.

This allows one visit to the foodbank and can only be repeated three times in six months.

Chris Cowpe, of Fairlie Church, explained: “People ask why foodbanks have emerged and whether they are self perpetuating. The truth is that times have changed and people on low incomes when losing their jobs have very little to fall back on. Benefits rarely kick in for the first four weeks and by then the cupboards are bare. A total of 30% of foodbank customers are there because of late payment of benefits.

“In helping people to help themselves, North Ayrshire Foodbank is now moving towards starting up a credit union locally.

“The collection at Fairlie Parish Church was very generous and successful.” A North Coast foodbank service has also been set up at a drop-off venue at the Citizens Advice bureau in Boyd Street, Largs, on Thursdays from noon-7pm.