DORSET Council teamed by with a brewer to deliver free hot meals for NHS workers.

Deliveries of homemade pub favourites were made to five community hospitals and three local hubs across the county as a thank you for NHS staff working over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Over 200 meals were sent to Dorset healthcare staff working at Shaftesbury’s Westminster Memorial Hospital, St Leonards Community Hospital, Wareham Community Hospital, Weymouth’s Community Hospital, Westhaven Hospital and Community hubs in Purbeck, Dorchester and East Dorset thanks to the partnership with Hall & Woodhouse.

Dorset Council portfolio holder for Adult Social Care and Health, Councillor Laura Miller, said: “The council is working really closely with our NHS partners as part of the work to shield our community from coronavirus and we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who worked over Easter and doing 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 & Woodhouse for the generosity and flexibility they have shown as part of this joint initiative - by all accounts their deliveries were really well received.”

Anthony Woodhouse, chairman of Hall & 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, Wimborne, and the Duchess of Cornwall, 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 our Steak and Tanglefoot pies with mash, roast lamb with all the trimmings and nut roasts with cans of Rio to wash it down with, 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.”

Hall & Woodhouse Brewery was established in Blandford in 1777.

The company operates over 250 pubs in the South of England.