AN organisation which runs food banks across East Lancashire has won a community enterprise award.

Community Solutions North West, which has bases in Accrington and Burnley, scooped the honour plus £1,000 to invest in its activities, at the Red Rose Resource Awards.

The charitable group was chosen for ‘outstanding and lasting contribution to the community waste sector’ for its food bank and a community RePaint scheme, a low-cost painting project for those in need using paint diverted from landfill.

Community Solutions was awarded the Best Community Enterprise prize at the Lancashire Community Recycling Network event at the Environmental Education Centre in Leyland.

Mark Hirst, director at Community Solutions said: “We are extremely grateful to receive this prestigious award and excited to be part of such an innovative network.

“We are people focused with all our projects, so to be recognised for our enterprise is a credit to all our staff, volunteers and partners.”

Founded in 2011, Community Solutions was originally set up as a food bank project.

Across its services, it now has 312 volunteers, with more than 80 involved with the food bank, and 14 in the Community RePaint scheme.

Earlier this year, the Lancashire Telegraph launched a campaign to urge readers to back their local food bank after revealing the shocking extent of food poverty in our region had led to cases of malnutrition in children.

The need for emergency food parcels shows no sign of slowing down.

To date, Community Solutions’ food bank has supported more than 6,500 people with around 169,000 meals which is a 455 per cent increase in food parcels from the same time last year.