A DEDICATED community champion from a Kidderminster supermarket has been awarded a prestigious honour for her selfless work.

Amanda Conner is Kidderminster Tesco’s Community Champion and her efforts saw her chosen to receive a British Citizen Award. She was presented with her gong at a ceremony at the Palace of Westminster.

She has worked at the store for more than 16 years and this has included her supporting groups and charities in the area as part of her role.

Among her successes at the Kidderminster store include making the store more accessible for the elderly.

Working with Alzheimer’s UK, she set up Tesco Kidderminster’s very first ‘relaxed aisle checkout, to enable shoppers to go at their own pace.

At the checkout, images of coins and notes are clearly marked and all colleagues who are on the checkout are ‘Dementia Friends’ accredited, meaning they have completed training to understand the needs of every customer in order to be able to adapt to their requirements.

Amanda has also championed Tesco’s food waste initiative in store to help several groups across the area.

The Community Food Connection programme provides charities and community groups with surplus food from their local stores to help feed people in need and ensure that no good food goes to waste.

With help from Amanda, a local night-café has been collecting food through the scheme to provide food and care to the homeless across Kidderminster.

In addition to ongoing store initiatives, for a number of years Amanda has also organised hugely successful tea-parties for the elderly and isolated within the community, which are held twice a year at the store and are completely free of charge.

She said: “I am delighted to receive this award, it’s such an honour. I feel humbled by the nomination.

“I couldn’t do all we do without the support of my colleagues, community volunteers and without the platform Tesco provides. It’s wonderful that by simply doing my job I can make such a difference.”

The awards are sponsored by optical retailer, Specsavers.

British Citizen Award Patron, Dame Mary Perkins said: “Giving back to our communities is at the heart of Specsavers' vision and values, so we are delighted to support this inspirational awards programme. 

"Each medal recipient has demonstrated a commitment to others that makes them the unsung heroes of our country and they thoroughly deserve to have a light shone on their selfless endeavours”.