Paragon has teamed up with St Gemma’s Hospice to help collect and recycle more than 1,400 unwanted Christmas trees in and around the city of Leeds. The Dorking-based company supported the annual disposal service by coordinating a team of 11 volunteer drivers, using its leading routing and scheduling software. As a result, the Hospice has raised over £14,000, which will be used to provide vital care for terminally ill people in West Yorkshire.

With such large numbers of local residents registering for the service across 15 postcode areas, St Gemma’s Hospice needed a simple and effective way of organising collections. Paragon was able to collate all the addresses and relevant information to create efficient and easy to use transport manifests for the volunteer drivers. These schedules not only provided details for each Christmas tree collection, but were also designed to keep journey times and fuel usage to a minimum.

Emma Penman, Events Fundraiser at St Gemma’s Hospice commented: “Paragon has helped us overcome one of the most difficult and complicated challenges we face when running the collection service. By handling all our scheduling requirements, they have saved us countless hours of planning and reduced the demands on our highly-valued team of volunteers. This has enabled us to focus on registering more trees and ultimately raising more money, so we would like to thank everyone involved at Paragon for all their efforts.”

William Salter, Managing Director at Paragon said: “We are immensely proud to have the opportunity to help an organisation that is making such a difference to people’s lives. St Gemma’s Hospice is at the heart of its local community and committed to providing the best possible care and quality of life. Therefore, it is essential that they raise the necessary funding for their valuable work and we look forward to supporting them further in the future.”

The Christmas tree collection service is supported by Leeds City Council along with a host of local and nationwide businesses. This year, vans have been donated by McCarthy’s Storage and Removal, Leeds Commercial Vehicle Hire, White and Company PLC, Moortown Fencing & Landscape Services, Roxton Tree Services and Robinson Worldwide Solutions Ltd. Volunteers were made up of employees from Npower, Falcrest Joinery, Prosperis, Sky, Yorkshire Bank, NatWest and Linley & Simpson working alongside the Hospice’s own team.

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