STUDENTS have said a free breakfast helps ease the cost-of-living pressure.

Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) free breakfast initiative allows students and staff to enjoy a hot breakfast, fruit and a hot drink from 8am to 11am every weekday as part of an offer introduced in November.

More than three-quarters of students and staff (76%) said the initiative had reduced the cost-of-living pressures on their budgets, after 40% reported that they were worried about running out of food.

Professor John McKendrick, co-director of the Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit, said: "The free breakfast offer was introduced as an initiative to relieve some of the cost-of-living pressures experienced by members of the GCU community and there is evidence to suggest it's achieving this aim."

The initiative has been extended to cover GCU’s spring semester and is expected to end in May.