Diss and District Rotary Club hand over dozens of slow cookers to Waveney Foodbank to ease pressure as cost of living crisis looms large

A rotary club has chipped in to offset the rise in energy bills after by donating dozens of slow cookers to a nearby foodbank.

Members of Diss and District Rotary Club handed over dozens of the appliances to Waveney Foodbank, which will, in turn, pass them on to some of its clients to see them through the coming months.

The Eye-based charity said cost-effective equipment would be desperately needed for families as energy prices look set to soar in the coming months.

Rotary club president Graham Wuidart said: “Someone noticed that Asda had some slow cookers at a competitive price, so we went out to get as many as we could.”

The 83-year-old, who lives in Victoria Road, added: “We nearly wiped out their whole supply.”

Slow cookers allow people to put together meals at a fraction of the cost they could otherwise with conventional ovens, while also using significantly less energy.

“They’re great for people who haven’t got a lot of ingredients to prepare meals,” added Mr Wuidart.

“The rotary motto is ‘service above self’, and so we try to help people wherever and whenever we can.”

Almost all of the slow cookers have now been passed on to clients of by the foodbank, which is based on Broome Industrial Estate.

“It’s just phenomenal,” said the foodbank’s manager, Matthew Scade.

“Thanks to their generosity, we can pass these on to our clients, which allows them to use a fraction of the energy that they would with a conventional oven.”

Energy bills are expected to jump by almost 50 per cent for millions of households across the UK this spring, as a result of a global rise in demand for oil and gas.