A TAKEAWAY restaurant will be offering free food and gifts to the homeless on Christmas Day.

Royal Fish and Chips on Southend High Street will open its doors for two hours on Christmas Day and give out free food to those who do not have anywhere to sleep or eat.

The takeaway owners will also be giving the homeless people gifts including hats, socks, scarves and other clothing items to help keep them warm during the winter weeks.

Eddie Farooq, manager of Royal Fish and Chips, said he was inspired to open the doors to the homeless after seeing so many living rough on the streets.

He said: “We often get a lot of homeless people coming into the place, and we’ve given them food and helped them out before, but when you’re walking around the town you can see so many with just nowhere to go any time soon.

“This really makes a difference when we’re in the Christmas season, the most of us will be able to be with our families, share presents, enjoy a lot of food in our homes, but these people won’t, they’ll be alone on the street like they are most of the time.

“We thought about it for a couple of weeks and decided we could do this. Every homeless person will get a free meal and we’ll hand out gifts to them all as well.”

Mr Farooq, 25, has been manager of the restaurant for several years, taking over from his uncle.

The restaurant has been running for around 60 years as a takeaway, and has worked under the name Royal Fish and Chips for around eight years.

Mr Farooq has made an appeal on Facebook for anyone to donate items they can give to the homeless.

He posted the appeal on Tuesday, and it has since been shared more than 550 times.

He added: “We’ve got pretty much all we need already, we had a massive response from my Facebook appeal, but obviously if anyone else wants to give anything they’re more than welcome to.

“We’re looking forward to it, we’ve not done anything like this before, but we felt the time was right to try it out.”

Anyone wanting to donate items can drop them into the restaurant at 25 High Street, Southend.

It will be open on Christmas Day from midday to 2pm.