The restrictions on drinking water caused some serious challenges for our clinical teams, who had to introduce new measures to ensure that everyone at the hospice stayed safe and well.

But none of us could have imagined a month ago that the ‘cloud’ of the United Utilities ban would turn out to have such a silver lining!

Now that everyone is getting back to normal, schools and colleges from across the Fylde Coast have donated their spare bottles of water to us. We are about to take delivery of over 20,000 little bottles, which will supply our big fundraising events for the rest of this year and all of next!

It’s a fantastic gesture which will save us hundreds of pounds, and it prompted local businesses to chip in with the free loan of a van and storage facilities to enable us to cope with such volume.

Lisa Martin, Community Fundraiser, came up with the original idea and said: “We have been overwhelmed by the offers of bottled water. We now have enough to replenish our fundraising supplies and cover all our up-coming events, such as the Santa Dash and probably even next year’s Blackpool Fun Run and Colour Splash.

“Local schools do so much for us over the course of the year, and this has helped us enormously. We are also grateful for the help in moving and storing it all.

“The ban on using water straight from the tap was a real headache for the hospice, and the clinical team had to introduce a lot of extra precautions to keep patients safe. It has been a real challenge, but suddenly the cloud has a silver lining – and the fact that one local man dropped by this week with £50 cash for us was the icing on the cake. He said it was from his United Utilities refund but he wanted the Hospice to benefit. How kind is that?”

The story made the front page of the Evening Gazette, the daytime news on Radio Wave and was filmed for local Lancashire tv. It’s a great example of how local people help us – a big thank you to everyone involved!

PS: We don’t need any more right now!!