In 2015, Labour narrowly won the fast-growing university city from the Lib Dems. With Brexit in the forefront of many of its voters’ minds, it is top of the list of Lib Dem target seats / By Elena Curti

In the centre of Cambridge on a wet Wednesday morning the city’s food bank is being run from the church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs. All around are upmarket shops and restaurants and the grandest of the university’s buildings. In the parish centre behind the Catholic church, the volunteers from the Trussell Trust are setting out a selection of tins and packets of food. It has been so busy that stocks are running low and there will be another appeal for food donations in supermarkets at the weekend.

“Cambridge is an affluent place but unfortunately it hides a multitude of people in dire straits and that’s why we’re growing,” says co-ordinator Patricia Williams. Her deputy, Susan O’Brien, identifies the causes of hardship as sky-high rents and low-paid jobs often on zero-hours contracts. Nurses and other workers, and also students, are among their clients.