KIND-HEARTED members of the public left an East Lothian charity “astounded” after donating nearly 12,500 kilogrammes of food.

Customers at the county’s Tesco stores did their bit to help the East Lothian Foodbank during a three-day collection late last year.

Once again, it proved a great success, with the Tranent-based charity collecting 12,405 kilogrammes of non-perishable food over the three days, compared to 11,740 kilogramme in 2017.

The foodbank was helped at the three stores by the newly-acclaimed volunteer team of the year award winners, volunteers of East Lothian Foodbank and by various Rotary clubs in the county, from Dunbar, Haddington, Tranent and Musselburgh, as well as Inner Wheel and Police Scotland’s youth volunteers.

Peter Dicker, East Lothian Foodbank manager, said: “Once again we have been astounded by the generosity of people in East Lothian with the total collected at the Tesco stores.

“As well as people giving us the food, we must make a special mention of the people who voluntarily give their time to help us with the collection.

“An extra special mention must go to Iain Hastie and his team at Wood Pellets East Lothian for driving round the three stores and collecting all the donations and delivering them to the foodbank in Tranent.

“We would also like to thank Martin Whitfield MP and Iain Gray MSP for their continued support at Musselburgh and Haddington helping with the collections.

“We must also thank the people and organisations who continue to deliver donations to us so generously.”

Meanwhile, the charity has also benefited from generous visitors to enjoyleisure’s sports facilities across the county.

enjoyleisure ran a ‘Remember, Remember the Foodbank this November’ campaign.

In total, the donations collected across enjoyleisure’s six sports centres amounted to 149kg, which equates to about 248 meals.

Bill Axon, enjoyleisure general manager, said: “As a community organisation, we wanted to show our support to this invaluable local initiative and assist those who are in need of its services.

“We are incredibly grateful to our customers and staff who contributed donations. Their generosity will help lighten the load for others this festive season.”