A Good Neighbour Group, Fairwood Helpers, Celebrates 25 Years Helping in our Community

Published on: 21 May, 2023
Updated on: 23 May, 2023

By Sue Harris

Chair of Fairwood Helpers

Fairwood Helpers has been operating for 25 years and during this time we have completed over 12,000 “jobs” and this was celebrated at our annual general meeting on Saturday, May 13 at St Albans Church in Wood Street.

We hope this wonderful service to our neighbours will continue long into the future.

A superb cake for the 25th anniversary celebrations for Fairwood Helpers.

We are a voluntary car group for people in the local area to use for medical appointments of any kind, be it chiropody, opticians, dentist, doctors or hospital appointments.

That is the core of our work but we also give help if we can for other tasks such as shopping for housebound, fetching prescriptions or to take people to visit relatives in hospital for example.

From left, current chair Sue Harris with founding members of Fairwood Helpers, John Barton and David Hypher at the annual meeting on Saturday, May 13.

People using our service give a contribution to cover running costs of the car, based on 45 pence a mile as set by national guidelines.

We kept open during lockdown but of course we were not giving people lifts anywhere. We were needed to get shopping and deliver prescriptions and phone people who were living on their own.

A delicious cream tea was enjoyed by Fairwood Helpers volunteers at its annual meeting at St Alban’s Church hall in Wood Street Village.

Anyone needing help can call our number 01483 237619 on a weekday between 10am and noon when someone is manning the phone.

However, you can call at any time out of these hours and a voice mail will be sent to the next person on duty who will deal with the request. Just leave your name and telephone number so that we can call you back.