From baking buns to a 25km trek along the Thames, no challenge was too great for fundraisers from a Locksbottom investment management and stockbroking firm.

The team from the branch of Redmayne-Bentley, based in Crofton Road, have raised £3,610 for Demelza Hospice Care for Children over the past year after choosing it as its charity for 2016.

Investment support executive Anita Evans said: “2016 was the first year that, as an office, we were supporting a specific charity for the year.

"We initially had a £500 target at the back of our minds, so to raise over £3,600 is amazing. We’re all really proud of what we have achieved.”

The year of fundraising kicked off last February with a Valentine’s Day-themed bake-off, which raised more than £100.

The group held numerous other events throughout the year, including sweepstakes and dress down days, and in September, took part in the 25km Thames Bridges Trek.

In this challenge, eight members of the team put on their hiking boots and crossed 16 bridges over the River Thames from Fulham to Southwark.

Anita added: “Our Thames Trek event was so successful that there are plenty of volunteers looking to do something similar again this year. That was our biggest fund raising event and it was an opportunity for friends and family outside of the office to support our fundraising too.”

Demelza Hospice Care for Children is a South East-based charity which provides specialist care and support to babies, children and young people who have life-limiting illness – and their families - from diagnosis, during day to day family life, times of crisis, end of life and through bereavement.

It supports some 500 families in Kent and South East London via its hospices at Sittingbourne and Eltham and in the East Sussex community.

Tamsyn Clark, director of fundraising at Demelza, said: “We are very grateful to all the staff at Redmayne-Bentley who really did put their best feet forward for us!

“As a charity, not part of the NHS, Demelza is reliant on fundraising, donations and gifts in wills to raise over £10.5million every year, enabling us to provide professional, specialist, one-to-one care and support and therapies, as well as access to life-enhancing facilities, such as our hydrotherapy pool in Kent.

“We are delighted Redmayne-Bentley chose us as their charity of the year – and with the total raised.”

You can find out more about Demelza at www.demelza.org.uk

Article submitted by Ruth Peterson