Local brewer, Hall and Woodhouse teamed up with Dorset Council to deliver free hot meals to five community hospitals and three local hubs in Dorset to help NHS staff who were working throughout the Easter Bank Holiday.
Over 200 meals were set to staff at Shaftesbury Westminster Memorial Hospital, St Leonard’s Community Hospital, Wareham Community Hospital, Weymouth’s Community Hospital, Westhaven Hospital and community hubs in Purbeck, Dorchester and East Dorset.
Speaking to reporters, Cllr Laura Miller, the portfolio holder for Adult Social Care and Health at Dorset Council, said: “The council is working really closely with our NHS partners as part of the work to shield our community from coronavirus and we wanted to say thank you to everyone who worked over Easter and did their bit to help local residents.
“When we realised that some people working over the Bank Holiday might be missing out on a hot meal, we wanted to put something in place and show our support. We are really grateful to Hall and Woodhouse for the generosity and flexibility they have shown as part of this joint initiative.”
Having been established in Blandford in 1777, Hall and Woodhouse now has over 250 pubs across the country but is committed to championing their roots and the local area. Anthony Woodhouse, chairman of Hall and Woodhouse, said: “Our teams live and breathe our purpose of making people’s day and serving our communities. With all our pubs temporarily shut, you can imagine how pleased the teams at the Olive Branch in Wimborne and the Duchess of Cornwall in Poundbury were to be given the opportunity to provide meals for the fabulous NHS staff in a number of Dorset hospitals over the Easter weekend. We hope that it will, in our own small way, show our thanks to the frontline heroes providing a beacon of light in the dark days of this crisis.”
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