Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock, has lately been thinking a good deal about freezers. The thought originated with a question from King Charles, last August, when he was still Prince of Wales. The sudden spike in food prices had caused an exponential rise in demand at food banks. It also prompted the future monarch to ask Casey – who, among many other things, is a trustee of his charitable fund – what might be done.
“Freezers!” she said and scrolled down her phone for the numbers for Nisbets, the catering supplier, and for Richard Walker, the managing director of Iceland Foods. Casey had learned from talking to organisers of food banks during the pandemic that one of their biggest frustrations was a lack of refrigeration for surplus fresh and perishable goods. “Ideally,” she told Charles, “we would get a freezer into every [food bank user’s] home and pay for the electricity, but to begin with let’s do it for food banks and community kitchens.” The king’s charitable fund stumped up £1m, and 800 freezers, some on an industrial, blast-chill scale, have now been installed. The night before we met, Casey had been at a Clarence House reception with the monarch, toasting cold storage.
