Kirkholt Pantry Scheme
Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) is the UK’s first tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society, with over 12,000 homes throughout the local area. RBH offer a range of initiatives to help the local community including money advice, furniture re-use services, domestic abuse support and a local pantry scheme.
RBH directly supports three Local Pantries in the Kirkholt, Smallbridge and Freehold neighbourhoods of Rochdale. The Local Pantry Scheme provides communities with low-cost food and groceries through a membership scheme. Not only does it save money for Pantry members, but it also helps the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by food waste in landfill.
In 2023, the Local Pantry Scheme has distributed over 41 tonnes of food that otherwise would have gone to landfill. As well as this, the pantries have saved their members an estimated £85k on food spending.
Volunteering & Donation
The Painting & Maintenance team hold a strong relationship with RBH, after successfully completing an external and internal painting project for the housing association in 2024, some of our Painting team got together to volunteer at the Kirkholt Local Pantry.
The team helped unload a variety of foods from lorries read y to be distributed to residents who are members of the scheme. We also donated over £1000 to the volunteer-led scheme to help the scheme coordinators.
The ‘Your Local Pantry’ is a great initiative that not only combats food poverty but gives individuals and families more disposable income to spend elsewhere. The donation from Seddon has enabled the pantry to continue to provide great quality food to the most deprived families and individuals in or community.
The team of volunteers were a great contribution to our busy Wednesday, helping to arrange receive and arrange the delivery ready for of members.
Zahida
Bashir
Pantry Coordinator
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
