BURGLARS smashed their way into a charity that helps the city’s most needy families.

The thieves rifled through food during the Sunday night break-in at the Oxford Food Bank warehouse in Lamarsh Road, before fleeing with a laptop and camera.

Organisers believe they may also have snatched donated tins and packets of food as well as causing hundreds of pounds of damage by smashing their way in through a back window.

Robin Aitken, co-director of the Oxford Food Bank, said: “They got into the warehouse and went through a whole lot of food and made a mess of things.

“They stole a laptop computer which was not valuable.

“Really – you do wonder at people. It’s difficult to be absolutely certain whether food was taken – we don’t keep a very accurate inventory because we move the food on very quickly.

“What there is, is given out to charities immediately.”

As well as the laptop and camera, the thieves also stole a chequebook.

Mr Aitken added: “It’s a completely pointless crime which will be expensive to make the place safe again.

“It will cost a couple of hundred pounds to put right which could have been better spent.”

Although the charity’s warehouse is covered by its building insurance policy, Mr Aitken said that the excess they would incur means it is not worth claiming.

The Oxford Food Bank has been running since 2006 and now works with 17 Oxford charities.

Carol Roberts, of the Rose Hill and Donnington Advice Centre, which regularly refers people to the centre, said: “These are people without a conscience.

“A young woman I sent there this week has a baby and she’s in the middle of getting her benefits changed – it’s a lifeline.”

Dad-of-four John-Paul Smith, 37, from Blackbird Leys, was recently forced to use the food bank when a benefits payments error left the family unable to pay for food.

He said: “The food bank is doing a good job for the local community and for someone to come in and do that is so disrespectful.”

Last year The Gannett Foundation, the charitable arm of the Oxford Mail’s parent company, gave the charity a grant of £10,000 to pay for a new refrigeration unit.

Anyone with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.