Dedicated volunteers in Croydon who are still going out every night to hand out food to those in need are seeing more demand amid the coronavirus crisis.

Croydon Nightwatch, the nightly food distribution service, is still running every night at 9.30pm in Queen’s Gardens, Park Lane.

Chairman Jad Adams said: “We’ve been seeing increased numbers of people coming to us because they haven’t got enough food.

“At the moment the poorest people are finding it particularly difficult to get food, especially those on zero hour contracts and who work cash in hand.”

But the charity is facing challenges of its own with difficulty getting hold of food from supermarkets and losing volunteers who are over 70 and have to stay home.

Jad added: “An awful lot of our volunteers have gone into self isolation, either because they are over 70 or they are caring for someone.

“At the same time we’ve had real difficulty getting supplies which we normally bulk buy at the supermarket – the stock isn’t available and it’s been restricted.

“We’re now using two Croydon companies Simply Lunch and Cafe Deli which have been packing up food for us. It all costs and we’re ending up spending about £1,000 a week more than usual.

“When we’re asking outside companies to supply us they’re not doing it as a charity, they’ve got workers to pay.

“Luckily enough we have balances, we’ve got money to keep going but if it was longer than 10 weeks we’d be worrying about it.”

The charity is also helping Croydon Council support former homeless people who are self isolating in hostels.

Nightwatch has been putting together 50-100 packs of non perishable food for these people who otherwise would have nothing.

In Queen’s Gardens in the past week around 40-50 people a night have turned up for food.

And the service saw a spike of 80 last Thursday.

“I can’t judge exactly what is going to happen now,” said Jad.

“That figure on Thursday surprised me, I’ve never known that on a weekday.

“I imagine as people find it harder to get food then we will be seeing more people. We are trying to keep the numbers down, we are aware of the whole issue of social distancing.”

Croydon Nightwatch is welcoming donations and volunteers who are able to commit to an evening ‘now and then’.

Email croydonnightwatch@btinternet.com for more information.