A COMMUNITY shop and support centre which has been offering cheap food to people throughout the pandemic has been saved from closure by a Leigh charity.

Bryn Support Centre will reopen on August 2 following a refurbishment.

Food waste charity The Bridge At Leigh will take over the shop, offering low-cost food and mental health services.

It comes after Cllr Steve Jones, who set up the store last year, announced he would stand down, but later rescinded his resignation.

The independent councillor said the shop and a new community centre were part of his pledges to voters ahead of the election only nine weeks earlier.

He said because the shop was due to close, he would have stood for re-election with a new set of pledges.

But he changed his mind after receiving ‘hundreds’ of messages from residents asking him to stay on as their representative despite the closure.

He was also contacted by The Bridge who offered to take over the shop.

The charity, based at a shop in The Avenue for three years, had a community café which has been closed during the Covid pandemic. It also supplies food for another foodbank in Atherton.

Food services manager Catherine Roberts said the store in Bryn, which the charity supplied food for as well, served a ‘valuable purpose’ in the area.

She said: “We just didn’t want it to close. We just thought, ‘what can we do?’

“We want to help the people of Bryn the same way we help the people of Leigh."

The community food shop at Bryn Support Centre will be part of the FareShare low-cost membership scheme which is free for the first year.