Freewheelers EVS is the winner of NatWest’s Bath and North East Somerset Community Fund.

In August NatWest launched a new fund, as part of its customer charter, to support local charities and projects, and invited customers and local people to decide who would benefit from this new community initiative. 380 individual funds of £5,000 were created nationwide, with £3,000 set to be awarded to the most popular good cause and £1,000 to the two runners up.

After weeks of voting a panel, made up of local bank officials, customers and community figures carefully examined the nomination papers and chose Mentoring Plus (Bath & N E Somerset), SWALLOW and Freewheelers EVS as the three charities to benefit from Bath and North East Somerset’s fund. The local community have since voted on which of the three charities would receive the £3,000 top donation and which two would each receive £1,000 - and Freewheelers EVS came out on top.

Colin Orr, NatWest’s Senior Bank Manager for the area, who was on hand to congratulate the volunteers, said: ‘The Community Fund really captured the imagination of the local community and I would like to say a big thank you to all those that took the time to nominate and then vote. All three charities are winners but for the Freewheelers volunteers it is obviously an extra special time.”

Jason Phillips, a Volunteer Rider from Freewheelers said ‘Hospital patients don’t usually see what we do, and its good to see that people appreciate us.  A big thank you to everyone for voting for the Blood Bikes to receive £3,000.  This award is quite timely, particularly as we are now supporting the “milk bank” by transporting breast milk to babies in neonatal intensive care.  We have also this week added a further on-call bike to our fleet to cover weekends and Bank Holidays as a result of an increase in demand for our services.’

Photos from the presentation can be seen in our gallery.