HIGHBRIDGE Foodbank enjoyed a surge in donations this week after receiving over 1000 kilograms of food from school harvest festival collections.

The foodbank said a huge thank you to schools around Burnham-on-Sea and Highbridge after they donated 1090.55kg of food to the service.

The good news came after a stressful few months for the foodbank, who announced they were suffering after demand for their services doubled earlier this year.

The new demand came after the introduction of Universal Credit meant that more people were using the foodbank after struggling to make ends meet.

Churchfields School, West Huntspill School, Burnham Infants School, St. Josephs School and St Andrews School collected donations for the foodbank during their harvest festivals.

Wayne Sadlier, chairman of Highbridge Foodbank said that he was optimistic for the foodbank's future: "The schools donations do help and support us well.

"We are really grateful to them for their continued support after all these years and we cannot thank them enough.

"The donations from the harvest festivals have really helped our overall stores.

Wayne added that he was looking forward to the Burnham Food Festival and that more volunteers have been coming to the foodbank.

"The Burnham-on-Sea Food Festival should be good fun for everyone.

"We will have a collection point set up in our usual spot at Burnham Methodist church so we will be there ready to collect any donations.

"Ever since we posted on Facebook about the amount we had in donations from the harvest festival, we have had lots of people getting in contact saying they want to become volunteers.

"Usually we only have volunteers who can help out for a few hours each month so having this extra help is really great for us."