Leisure and Local Authority come together to contribute to covid community effort

The sports hall at Hereford Leisure Centre is used to seeing groups of people come together to get active, but recently it has welcomed a new type of team which has been flexing its muscles and pulling together for an entirely different reason.

Hereford Leisure Centre may be currently closed to the public, but for the past 3 months it has played an essential role as the Emergency Delivery Hub for the County. The large space in the sports hall and good road access meant it was ideally positioned to receive and distribute supplies, with the centre able to adapt at short notice to its new community role.

Matt Smith, Hereford Leisure Centre Manager said: “Herefordshire Council worked with Halo staff to set up the centre to first distribute food to people who needed to isolate due to being at high risk of Covid 19; to then becoming the distribution hub for essential PPE to care providers across the County.”

Cllr David Hitchiner, Leader of Herefordshire Council, said: “We are incredibly grateful to the Halo team for supporting the Council in its emergency response to Covid 19 in making sure food reached people who needed it and our care homes and care providers had essential personal protection equipment.” He continued: “the Halo team where incredibly accommodating and their input invaluable with their community ethos evident in the support they gave at this challenging time”

Matt went on to say: “Halo is a charity and social enterprise so it was important to us to play our part and to support our partners in the Council. Until the space is able to safely welcome back our customers, it was great to see it being used for such an important community service”