CHARITIES and community groups across Colchester are being invited to receive free food from Tesco this summer.

The supermarket donates hundreds of thousands of meals to good causes each week as part of its Community Food Connection scheme, in conjunction with food charity FareShare and FoodCloud technology.

School-operated groups do not need the extra food during the summer holidays, and so it goes to waste.

To combat this, Tesco is reaching out to charities to find out how they could benefit.

Alec Brown, Head of Community at Tesco, said: "Whilst many school breakfast clubs don’t operate over the summer, we know there are many groups doing holiday activities that could benefit from surplus food.

“We are encouraging local groups who do to get in touch with FareShare, to find out if our surplus food could support their work in the community this summer."

The free food includes fresh fruit, vegetables and bakery products and chilled food like meat, cheese and ready meals.

Groups registered with the Community Food Connection are given scheduled collection days and receive a text alert to tell them what food is available. They can then choose what they want from the surplus food on offer.

Anyone looking to benefit from the scheme can visit www.fareshare.org.uk/fareshare-go.