Northwich M&S helps deliver improvements at school

The store has worked with the school as part of its ‘Make every moment special in the community’ initiative.

After selecting Victoria Road as one of their partners M&S began working on initiatives which would bring lasting benefits to the school.

Not only do they provide the school with food and sundries for their breakfast and after school clubs, but have also given spare items of clothing on top of other support.

As well as this, M&S has worked closely with Victoria Road to upgrade their playing field and wooded area, which is across the road from the school.

Work on the playing field is to be continued at the next stage of the project.

The space was overgrown, unsafe and had insufficient seating for taking a full class, leaving M&S with a brief of clearing the wooded area of unsafe trees, cleaning seating, providing additional seating with a covered area for studying and potentially cleaning up the pond to facilitate pond dipping.

Julia Weightman, clothing and home section manager at Northwich M&S, said: “We removed dead trees, cut back overhanging foliage, jet-washed benches, picnic tables and the pond area while also providing four new picnic tables.

“The team removed an unsafe raised flower bed before building a new one.

“Following this we prepared a half-raised bed for children to grow fruit and vegetables and planted the other half with flowers, which will add an exciting dimension to the children’s outdoor activities.”

Julia said the store carried out fundraising to help facilitate extra improvements at the school, and other initiatives were in the pipeline.

She said: “We raised funds in the store by conducting events in the staff area and by staff giving up their own time to bag pack on foods for a charitable donation. This enabled us to supply materials and complete a lot of additional tasks.

“This is only the start for our partnership, and we have plenty of other plans to continue to work with the school to enhance it even further.”