The North Norfolk News office in Cromer has a food mountain building up as more and more people bring in donations for the Banking on You appeal.

The Church Street office has been inundated with generous gifts - from single tins to plastic bags and boxes filled with food, drink and other items.

You have risen to the challenge of helping north Norfolk's neediest people, who have fallen on hard times and need emergency parcels to get them through a crisis.

The Banking on You appeal is in association with Cromer and District Foodbank, which has its first base at Cromer Methodist church hall on Hall Road - and which opened new distribution hubs in recent weeks at St Joseph's Roman Catholic church hall, Cromer Road, Sheringham, and the hall at North Walsham's Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church.

Tina Nicholas, foodbank chairman, said the North Walsham centre, which launched last week, had already served a 'number of clients', while the overall number of people helped since the foodbank's launch had topped 150.

Yesterday, Mrs Nicholas and other volunteers came into the News' office to collect Christmas-related donations, includes mince pies, crackers, sweets and Christmas puddings, so that they can be given out for the festive season.

Mrs Nicholas said the pile of donated items looked 'brilliant', and added: 'We continue to be amazed at people's generosity and the way it is continuing.

'With the onset of the cold weather, it seems that people are even more understanding of how difficult it can be to pay for the heating and lighting.'

She said the foodbank had recently helped a lady who had no food and no money to heat her house.

She said: 'Sadly, nobody helps with heating bills, but at least we were able to give her some food.'

Mrs Nicholas said everybody was 'feeling the pinch', and said: 'When you realise that it is biting you, you know that it's not going to take much for those on a lower income to have a real problem.'

The foodbank, which only launched in August, is in negotiations with local churches to set up distribution centres at Aylsham and Holt.

Mrs Nicholas said the Aylsham centre could be launched in January, with the Holt centre following in March.

The parcels, which contain, food, drink and other essentials, are designed to last for three days to enable people to get help from other agencies. We are asking you to spare one item of shopping to go into the food parcels. They can be left at the foodbank bases or brought into the News' office Cromer between 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.