1,000 festive fundraisers needed to help raise £14,000 for Sheffield Children's Hospital

Landscape gardeners Mitchel Ingham and Joel Berry are raising money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital this Christmas by disposing of people’s unwanted trees.

They took over the service last year after the previous provider retired, and - after some teething troubles last year - now have a brand new website and booking system in place.

They already have a thousand people signed up for the service but, if they were to get another thousand, the treasured Children’s Hospital would get an astonishing £14,000.

Speaking before Christmas, Mitchel, who runs JM Groundcare, said they were hoping to comfortably surpass the 1,100-1,200 trees they collected last year.

He said: “We're hoping it will be bigger and better than last year. It was a bit of a steep learning curve.

“We’ve teamed up with a local media marketing company who have done the website for us. And we've also scaled it back a bit so we're only doing certain postcodes. I lost my entire Christmas last year."

Unlike last year when they covered most of South Yorkshire, this year they will no longer be collecting in Rotherham or Barnsley, and will only visit Sheffield postcodes between S1 and S21 plus S35.

Last year, Cheryl Davidson, community fundraising manager at The Children's Hospital Charity, paid tribute to Mitchel and Joel for taking over the service from long-standing provider Andrew Powell.

She said: “Supporting the effort this year will help make a huge difference to the lives of young patients from across the UK and around the world who rely on the specialist care at our wonderful hospital.”

You can book the service now but the collections begin on Monday, January 7, and will last a week.

The service costs £10 for the first tree and £5 for every tree after that from the same address but any tree over 9 ft tall will incur additional charges.

To find out more or book, visit www.christmastreecollections.uk.