A hospice charity that ran a drive-through donation service for its shops has had to stop taking items in stores after receiving more than 50 tonnes of stock in a month.
St Barnabas Hospice, which operates 26 stores in Lincolnshire, opened a drive-through donation service to receive stock from supporters for two weeks in early July, before it began reopening its shops.
But the charity said it had received more than 4,000 bags and boxes of donations in that two-week period and estimated that a further 11,000 had been donated across the 20 stores it had since been able to reopen.
This meant the charity had no capacity to receive further donations, despite it having access to extra storage space in the form of three cowsheds at the local Lincolnshire Showground.
A spokeswoman said the charity had been “indundated, but in the best way” with items from supporters.
The charity estimates it received about 10 times the amount of donations it would normally take in July.
It has suspended taking donations for a month.
Caroline Peach, head of retail at the charity, said: “The last thing we wanted to do was to temporarily stop accepting items, but our sorting team just can’t keep up with the speed that we are receiving them at the minute.
“They are also having to wait 48 hours before the items are deemed safe to handle under government guidance.
“This is why we are asking people to stop donating for a few weeks while our team of staff and volunteers works through the donations and gets them delivered to our charity shops to be sold.”