A MALDON hamper business is attempting to get 70 Essex businesses to donate a hamper to Broomfield Hospital to mark the NHS’ birthday.

Secret Hamper, set up by Nigel Richardson, allows people to send a hamper of essentials to friends or family.

After a successful effort with Maldon Furniture last year, where 40 hampers were donated to the hospital’s neonatal ward, the company was inspired to take on a bigger challenge for the NHS’ 70th birthday this year.

The plan is to get 70 businesses to pledge to donate a hamper to various units within the hospital to help a wider range of staff for their work in helping people’s lives.

Secret Hamper plans to pull together the full amount of 70 hampers and deliver them in one sitting to various departments of Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford.

The company are already halfway to their goal, having already received 35 pledges from businesses to donate a bespoke hamper each.

The bespoke sharing hampers are made up of products from Tiptree Patisserie, Fairfields Farm Crisp, Retro Corn and Shaken Udder.

Each company who pledges a hamper can request a certain ward if they so wish and Secret Hamper can add a personalised note from each company to each box.

Nigel Richardson said: “We chose Broomfield as it is where we launched Secret Hamper from two-years-ago when we took on the Farleigh Hospice £50 Challenge.

“After working with John Church from Maldon Furniture last year sending 40 hampers to the neonatal unit at Broomfield and seeing how well they were received, I thought we could do a similar campaign again but this time for a wide range of NHS staff.

“We have had a great response so far considering we only launched the campaign on Thursday, we have had one of our tweets retweeted by Stephen Kelly CEO of Sage UK who tagged in the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

“Who knows, if this campaign goes well we could duplicate all over the country. It’s a great story for local businesses to tell.”

Any company wishing to pledge to donate a hamper should email nigel@secrethamper.com.