High Littleton Primary School, St John’s Primary School and Next Steps Nursery and Wellow Recreation are delighted to announce they have bagged £5,000, £2,000 and £1,000 respectively from a Tesco funding scheme.

Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to deliver its Bags of Help funding initiative, which sees grants raised from the 5p bag levy being awarded to local community projects voted for by millions of shoppers in stores up and down the country. Work will now begin on bringing these ideas to life.

High Littleton Primary School will be using the money to develop their outdoor play area, replacing a damaged retaining wooden wall with a stone wall. The new wall will become part of a play zone, creating an additional space for the children to engage in outdoor play. St John’s Primary School and Next Steps Nursery will be putting the money towards purchasing new play equipment. This will give the children access to safe and stimulating play facilities, increasing their opportunities for outdoor learning, while Wellow Recreation will be putting their grant towards staging an open air performance of the play, The Third Policeman by the professional Miracle Theatre Company. This will be held on Thursday, 6th July at Wellow Recreation ground.

Lindsey Crompton, Head of Community at Tesco, said: “Bags of Help has been a

fantastic success. We have been overwhelmed by the

response of our customers and it’s been great to give people a say on how the money will be spent in their community. We can’t wait to see the projects come to life.”

Voting ran in stores throughout December – with customers choosing which local project they would like to get the top award using a token given to them at the check-out in store. Tesco estimates that around six million votes were cast in stores up and down the UK.

Since launching in 2015, Bags of Help has awarded more than £24m across 2,421 local projects. During March, customers will be able to vote for local groups all year round, every time they shop, and grants will be awarded every two months – meaning that thousands more projects will benefit from the scheme.

Funding will now be awarded to groups who are seeking to use and develop community spaces both indoors and outdoors and money will be available in amounts of £4,000, £2,000 and £1,000.

Customers will get the chance to vote for three different groups. At the end of each voting period, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tesco’s

regions will be awarded funding.

Groundwork’s national Chief Executive, Graham Duxbury, said: “It’s projects like these that really help to capture the public’s imagination by illustrating what can be achieved when communities are given the support and the encouragement they need to create better places where they live.”

Anyone can nominate a local project and local organisations can apply.

To find out more, visit: www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp