FOOD bank volunteers are settling into their first permanent home.

The Oxford Food Bank’s 80 volunteers took its food stock and shelving from one side of Botley Road to the other a week ago.

The charity’s temporary lease in the old Habitat store at Seacourt Retail Park ran out so the food bank took the chance to find their first permanent home on the Curtis Yard industrial estate off Botley Road.

They even managed to carry on food bank business as usual, delivering their daily service distributing around £2,000 worth of food to families in need.

Robin Aitken, co-director of the Oxford Food Bank and a former BBC journalist, said: “Previously we have always lived with the knowledge that we will have to move at some point, and it does make you feel a bit impermanent. Now we have somewhere permanent it feels a lot more settled.

“And we managed to keep everything going – the service wasn’t interrupted.

“It all worked out very well, and that’s thanks to all the volunteers who came down to help shift the stuff.”

The charity’s large walk-in chiller fridge was the only thing they didn’t manage to move themselves. A specialist contractor stepped to do the work free.

The Oxford Food Bank is also celebrating its fourth birthday this month.

Mr Aitken, 60, from Oxford, said: “We have expanded year on year.

“This is the first time we have had to pay for premises, but now we are well established and we get a lot of support from people so although this is going to increase our costs it is something we feel we can cope with now we have landed on our feet.”

The annual lease for their new home is around £15,000, doubling their costs.

The food bank collects fresh food about to be thrown away by supermarkets and wholesalers and gives it to charities and families in need.

They deliver seven days a week to around 40 charities in Oxfordshire.

In December they started delivering directly to community centres where the food is needed most – including Rose Hill and Barton.