April 17, 2020 6.02 pm This story is over 59 months old

Lincoln hotel feeds NHS staff with free healthy meals

Free healthy meals for NHS staff three days a week
Paul Catlow, co-owner of The Castle Hotel, delivering free healthy meals for NHS workers.

A hotel in the Bailgate area of Lincoln is now providing free healthy meals for NHS workers and made its first delivery on Friday.

Paul Catlow and Saera Ahmad, owners of The Castle Hotel on Westgate, are currently self-funding their initiative in a bid to ensure that NHS staff have at least one healthy meal a day, whether it’s to eat at work or to take home after a long shift.

They delivered some 200 meals to the ICU, A&E and COVID-19 wards at Lincoln County Hospital, as well as to nursing teams, including at Ravendale Health Clinic.

The meals offered including sausage and mash with onion gravy, cottage pie and chilli with rice (both with a vegetarian option), as well as desserts such as apple and mixed berry crumble.

The meals include sausage and mash with onion gravy.

The couple plan to provide meals every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and are appealing for other restaurants and businesses to get on board to help them expand the offering to seven days a week.

They have also launched a GoFundMe page to help enable them to provide these meals for the next five weeks, costing £2,000 in total – click here to make a donation.

Hotel co-owner Saera told The Lincolnite that after being forced to close and furlough staff, they wanted to try and do something to help the NHS at this difficult time, as well as make use of their empty commercial kitchen.

The Castle Hotel delivered the first meals to Lincoln County Hospital and the Ravendale Heath Clinic on Friday, April 17.

She said: “We don’t like just sitting at home and wanted to use our time to help. The idea is for NHS staff to have a healthy meal while on shift or to take it home when they leave, so they have at least one home cooked meal a day.

“We are looking for other restaurants to do this with, so we can expand what we are doing. If we could do more we would and this is just a small gesture to show our appreciation for the great job NHS staff are doing.”

Anyone who wants to participate or donate food, please email [email protected].