One of the founders of Help the Elderly Ashby de la Zouch says vulnerable people will need groups like his for some time to come.

The lockdown was extended by the Government for another three weeks which means people will be largely housebound until May at the earliest.

And that means organisations like Help the Elderly are becoming as valuable as ever at the moment even though they have only been formed for around a month.

The group was started by Chris Hart and Phil and Nicole Soar after setting up collection points in Ashby.

They then formed Help the Elderly and used the Bowling Green pub in Ashby as a collection point New Ashby group appeals for donations

Now the group is on a list of Community Support Schemes Run by North West Leicestershire District Council and Ashby Town Council

And Chris says their work is not done yet.

"It's inevitable that more and more people are going to need help like this, the figures have been going up all the time in the UK stop I when you hear about the amount of deaths every day, you know it's not going away yet.

Five or six people a day of taking us up on this at least, I went out one day at 10 in the morning, and got back at five at night. That's doing things like waiting for prescriptions. Talking about helping out 50 people a week at the moment.

"We report to the Ashby roundtable now but it's been going well, we've had to get somebody else in because there's too much to do.

"We've had more contributions and, at the end of the day it's still worth our time, because there's people out there in worse state than us."

Chris says the requests from people in the area vary and he is prepared to do what it takes at times.

"We'll get anything that anybody needs, the other day I went out and spent £20 of my own money, she was but she had no food. She couldn't get out she couldn't do anything. So I rang her and asked her for a shopping list, I paid for it with my own money and dropped it round there," he said.

"You can still use the Bowling Green, 100 oercent, even though the pubs are closed. But they need to contact me Phil or Nicole first as we've got access.

"But don't just turn up, you could even drop supplies off to me directly."

And Chris says that all safety measures are taken when delivering items to houses - but he knows that by being out as much as they are, all of them have to take extra care.

Chris had to self-isolate for a while after showing symptoms but is back now.

He added: "Being out there, you don't even think about it until you get home.

"And then you say to yourself: 'I hope I'm okay'. But we sanitise the gloves when we deliver and then phone the people we spoken to to tell them their supplies are on the doorstep and they can come out and get it.

"We don't actually see the people,, other than the odd one who might need money getting out of the bank for us

"But we are staying safe, we're not coming into contact it's too risky.

'We've had a large donation of meat from the butchers, which someone very kindly paid for.

"The butchers also donated a tray of freshly baked bread.

"As well as that, Tesco donated a FULL trolley full of tins/crisps/toilet rolls. etc.

"A massive thanks to all of you that have helped over the past week. We're making such a big difference to the local community.

"Myself and Phil have now started the same set up in Heather - as this is where we live. You can find us at Help the Elderly - Heather. Please like lour page to keep up to date."