WINCHESTER'S MP has been cycling across the county to deliver thousands of rough sleepers food.

Steve Brine is now volunteering with Red Radish in his spare time – a Hampshire-based backstage catering company which has been providing meals to the vulnerable during lockdown.

You would usually find the businesses providing location catering for TV or film and planning for summer festivals.

But since lockdown started, the caterer has been helping St Mungo's charity initiative to feed more than 5,000 rough sleepers in empty hotels.

Director Wayne Brown: “Being a Londoner, St Mungo’s has always been an organisation close to my heart, so it has been wonderful to work with both them and the GLA on their great initiative to house rough sleepers during this crisis.

"Also, having recently moved to Winchester it has been a real fast-track initiation into the wonderful local community.

“It's also enabled Red Radish to donate around 20,000 meals to lots of great organisations and key-workers, whilst at the same time keeping 40 plus talented chefs and crew working round the clock."

Red Radish has transformed its usual operation into a cooking, packing and distribution centre which supplies three meals a day to each resident in more than 20 hotels.

Thanks to the St Mungo’s job, their own cash and donations, the Red Radish team have also donated thousands of hot meals to various charities, community groups, rough-sleepers, families, frontline workers, and volunteers across Winchester, Basingstoke and the surrounding villages.

Red Radish staff have cooked and packed these donations while local organisations FirstBite and the Salvation Army, as well as the MHA Live at Home Scheme, have helped distribute them to people in need.