A CHIPPING SODBURY business aims to help the homeless after Christmas shelters close by providing blankets, sleeping bags and other donations.

Staff at the house building company Redcliffe Homes’ head office have been making donations to ensure continued night-time warmth for the homeless in Bristol, in the form of 10 new sleeping bags and 12 army-surplus-quality blankets.

The donations have been made to the charity Caring at Christmas, which provides homeless people with warm and safe accommodation, food and a range of health and counselling services and entertainment.

Receptionist Emma Duncan and customer service manager Karen Wicks said they were delighted by the generosity of their colleagues who not only donated cash for the sleeping bags and blankets, but gave six large boxes of food items and a further £250 to the charity Caring At Christmas.

Ms Duncan said: “One of my friends volunteered at the Caring At Christmas Shelter last year, and it inspired us at Redcliffe Homes to try and identify a really practical way to help those less fortunate than ourselves at this time of year.”

The colleagues installed a large collection box wrapped in festive paper in the foyer of their offices which, during the course of December, was refilled numerous times with non-perishable food items for use in the charity’s kitchens.

Generous Redcliffe staff also gave the money to buy the new sleeping bags and blankets, as well as a cash injection for the Christmas shelter.

Ms Wicks said: “The charity’s organisers told us blankets are rarely donated nowadays, because people tend not to have second-hand ones to pass on, but they’re so useful for homeless people, as are the sleeping bags of course.”

The house building company recently helped fund a new kitchen for the Bristol based charity Borderlands, donating £1,450 to renovate the kitchen in the first week of December, which will be by hundreds of homeless and underprivileged people for hot meals.

The Caring At Christmas shelter, on Little Bishop Street, is open from 3pm on Christmas Eve, all the way through until New Year’s Day, offering over 50 beds and serving around 300 hot meals per day.

For more information about the charity visit: www.caringatchristmas.org.uk.