A CHARITY which serves meals to vulnerable people is celebrating its fifth birthday in its newest venue today.

FoodCycle Clacton, based at the Baptist Church, in Pier Avenue, has been providing Clacton's vulnerable community with cooked food for five years.

The scheme sees volunteers provide three-course lunches, and small grocery bags to take home if there are enough supplies, every Monday at noon.

Each week the church sees 50 to 60 people turn up for a meal and dozens of volunteers give up their time to cook and serve them. 

Over the past five years, the scheme has served 2,358 people, saved more than 12 tonnes of surplus food from being wasted, and has almost 2,500 volunteer hours of service from supporters.

Julie Claxton, one of the project leaders at FoodCycle Clacton, said: "It is a privilege to be there and support these people every Monday. 

"When you get to know them they are lovely and interesting people. Some of them have just fallen on hard times

"We love our Mondays. There is always a good spirit in our strong team at Clacton and a lot of us have been there for quite a long time.

"I wear an apron of 500 hours service but a lot of other projects have a different team every week.

"The guests get to know us and every Monday is good fun - we have good banter and it is so lovely to be doing something worthwhile in the community which adds value to their lives."

FoodCycle Clacton gets all of its food from supermarkets and grocery stores. 

The national scheme aims to make food poverty, loneliness and food waste a thing of the past.

It works with thousands of volunteers and food shops to help as many people as possible.

For more information about FoodCycle go to foodcycle.org.uk.