THREE Sussex businesses teamed up to provide food for the homeless over Christmas.

Representatives from The Star Inn at Alfriston, KP Landscapes and mental health pressure group Bang The Desk handed out food to those who were struggling at this time of year.

Emily Polling from Bang The Desk, Charlotte Murday of KP Landscapes and Elleesha Phillips from the Star Inn Alfriston took to the streets armed with homemade sandwiches, mince pies, fruit and a few Christmas treats.

Founder of Bang The Desk, Emily Polling, said: “Bang The Desk is a new pressure group designed by students for students and is fighting to introduce better mental health care, mindfulness and wellbeing into the school curriculum.

“The Star Inn Alfriston and KP Landscapes have been incredibly supportive of the campaign from the start.

“We all decided to team up and actively encourage others to be more mindful of those who might be alone and struggling.”

Charlotte Murday, head of HR at KP Landscapes which covers Lewes, Newhaven and Peacehaven, came up with the idea after talking with Bang The Desk about their campaign.

Charlotte said: “All of us at KP Landscapes are right behind Bang The Desk.

“We understand the importance of mental health care and wanted to step up to do our bit to look after those who might be struggling in our community.

“I suggested we all teamed up and worked together to do something positive for those who literally have nothing.”

The Star Inn at Alfriston was also instrumental in making the evening a success.

General manager Elleesha Phillips provided a large number of sandwiches and fruits to be handed out to the homeless.

She said: “Everyone at the Star Inn wanted to offer their help and support.

“We feel it is really important as a business to also play a role in our local community and we were keen to help in whatever capacity we could.

“We hate to see good food wasted so we were really pleased to be able to donate the sandwiches and get involved.

“No-one should be going hungry, especially when there is plenty of food to go around.

“We were really pleased to be able to take part and encourage others to be more mindful of those who aren’t so fortunate.”

The first stop for the girls was SVP soup run in Brighton.

Volunteers gather at the Crypt at St George’s Church in Kemptown every night to prepare a trolley of food to give out to the homeless.

The three businesses donated bags of freshly prepared sandwiches, mince pies, fruit and biscuits to the charity before heading out into Brighton town to hand out any extra supplies to those who didn’t make it to the soup run.

Charlotte Murday, head of HR at KP Landscapes, said: “Words cannot express how important it is to take care of those around you.

“We got some of the biggest smiles and nicest thank yous for giving something as simple as a sandwich.”

“One gentleman was just so excited he could pick which type of sandwich he wanted - and that was heartbreaking.

“These poor people are totally alone, their bedding was soaking wet and it was freezing cold - that’s just not right.

“Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are, it’s important to remember to take time to care for those who have not had such a lucky hand.”