A community larder is a food club that offers a range of benefits including low cost food. The Oxfordshire community larders are organised by SOFEA, and feature access to utility discounts and social tafrrifs, a ‘little larder’ club, meeting new people in a friendly environment, and lots of food that would otherwise be wasted.

Anyone can join. Costs are £10 registration per year plus £3.50/week for individual membership or £7/week for family membership. Register at www.sofea.uk.com.

Food for Charities has helped to set up the

• Botley community larder
• Leys community larder

For anyone interested in setting up a larder themselves, here is information kindly provided by two expert organisations, about the form of organisation that a larder could take, and whether/how a larder can employ people. This is for information only and not legally confirmed etc.!

Form of organisation:

“My colleagues have suggested setting up as a CIO (Charitable Incorportated Organisation). If you go through this routemap: https://www.resourcecentre.org.uk/information/routemap/ it recommends models based on your requirements.The CIO must be registered with the charity commission and reports to them. They would not need to register with companies house making their reporting process significantly easier. When applying you will need:

• Name of your CIO
• bank or building society details
• most recent accounts
• contact details, including a postal address
• trustees’ names, dates of birth and contact details
• a copy of your charity’s governing document
• Explain your charity’s charitable purposes
• Explain how you run your charity for public benefit

The Government webpage on this is really clear and simple and worth looking through: https://www.gov.uk/set-up-a-charity. The hefty bit is around setting up a constitution and this page sets out a really clear step by step what you need to include in this: https://www.resourcecentre.org.uk/information/constitutions/“

Employee v. consultant

You are perfectly at liberty to employ anyone you like to manage your volunteers. If your board prefers to use a consultant at this time, there is not a problem with that. 

Our guidance on Controls on Human Resources Costs states:
https://knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/tools-resources/financial-procedures-manual/writing-the-financial-procedures-manual/controls-on-human-resources-costs

"Casual staff and consultants can provide a very useful complement to your staff team, either to accommodate times of peak need, or to bring particular skills, but temporary staff are expensive. 

You need to define when you would make use of them, and be clear about the need for prior approval.

Your organisation might want to create a standard agreement if you make regular use of contract staff so that you can be sure that you are not inadvertently creating an employment situation."

You may find this (a little old) article from the Guardian useful to when planning what you may need to take into consideration when using a consultant:
https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2012/may/23/charity-consultant-advice".