A HEREFORD cancer charity has been awarded almost £1,500 by the Hereford Times's popular grants scheme.

Breast Cancer Haven supports women throughout or after their breast cancer treatment, providing a tailored package of emotional, physical and practical support.

The grant of £1,475 will go towards buying two portable therapy beds and and three medical screens.

The charity's St Owen's Street centre currently has a space used for yoga, tai chi and pilates. The new equipment will be used to divide the room into temporary therapy/consultation areas, and will help it cope with the increasing demand for its services.

The therapy beds will also be used to hold outreach days in community or medical centres in less advantaged areas of Herefordshire.

The trustees of the Gannett Foundation, the charitable fund run by Newsquest Media Group, the publisher of the Hereford Times, have given nearly £300,000 to 50 good causes around the UK this year.

Newsquest is one of the UK’s leading news publishers and over the last 10 years alone it has given more than £3 million to help charitable community projects all over the country, from Scotland and Northern Ireland to London and the West Country.

The trustees who make the grants have agonised for days to make difficult choices from a stack of deserving applications, but they narrowed the list down to those which they thought would deliver the most worthwhile practical benefits to communities served by Newsquest’s local news brands.

Grants are made on merit and Scotland was the stand-out winner this year.

Among the grants made was one of £10,000 towards buying and kitting out a caravan for the Glasgow Children's Holiday Scheme, which has been well-supported locally in the past by the Evening Times. Another £5,000 goes to equip a new community café in Clackmannanshire. And a grant of more than £8,000 was made to a group regenerating a run-down public park for the community at Leven in Fife.

The hospice movement attracted favour from the trustees again this year. An organisation called Hospice at Home delivers palliative care in Cumbria and is getting £10,000 for a van to support its fund-raising retail outlets in Wigton, Penrith and Carlisle (home to the News and Star).

Further south, life for the homeless at a hostel in St Helens in the North West should be made a little easier in the new year with just under £10,000 for a walk-in shower and kitchen equipment, including a commercial dishwasher. And thanks to the Telegraph and Argus in Bradford, the Eccleshill Adventure Playground will be getting quite a bit more adventurous with nearly £9,000 worth of exciting new construction.

An ambitious environmental project on the River Aire in North Yorkshire caught the attention of the trustees. A grant of £9,000 will support a project to reclaim a stretch of waterway at North Beck near Keighley which has been overwhelmed by illegal fly-tipping – a scandal exposed in our local news titles. The money will back a movement of local residents and businesses in clearing the waste and putting in security measures to stop the dumping, rediscovering the area as a tranquil urban green space.

Many more grants were given across the UK for a myriad of different causes, including a helping hand for scout groups, support for people with dyslexia, sport for the disabled, special equipment for the visually-impaired and foodbanks for the needy.

The trustees are always keen to help with those vital repairs to facilities that make all the difference and keep community activities going. So they are helping to replace the windows at a village hall in Essex, and fixing the main entrance door at an Age Concern centre in South London.

If your application missed out this year, you can try again next year. Awards are made on merit and applications are invited by advertisement in the Hereford Times from the end of July. Look out for the notices.

The Gannett Foundation UK, which makes the grants, retains a modest reserve to cater for urgent applications until the next round of awards are made in December 2019. Ad hoc applications can be made through any local Newsquest Media Group editor.

Special awards went to a number of charities connected with the news industry. The trustees gave £8,000 to the Journalism Diversity Fund of the National Council for the Training of Journalists, providing scholarships for trainee journalists from diverse backgrounds.

A donation of £10,000 was made to the Journalists Charity and the same again to Newstraid, both benevolent organisations supporting people involved in the news industry who have fallen on hard times.

And the trustees also gave £5,000 to the Rory Peck Trust for the welfare of freelance journalists.

Chairman of the trustees Simon Westrop said: “Amid all the political and economic turmoil, real life goes on, of course. And it is a privilege for the trustees to be able to do a little something to help where we can.

“If your application did not succeed this time, please don’t be discouraged, but look at the applications that have won grants and think how you can come up with even better ideas next year.

“Often we think the best applications are not the headline-grabbers but the small ones that meet a particular need and instantly improve daily life. For instance, the new kettle the community centre has been wanting for ages. So think practically.”