HospiceCare North Northumberland set to open a new charity store on high street in Berwick later this year

Making the announcement during the current Hospice Care Week, now that the lease has been signed for the premises at 59 Marygate, it is aiming to have the new charity store trading “before Christmas 2024”.

The hospice already has Hazel Marsden House on Violet Terrace in Berwick. It opened in 2015 following a £25,000 grant, which enabled the building to be split into a shop and clinical space.

HospiceCare North Northumberland will be staying at Hazel Marsden House and the clinical side of things will remain the same. The other part will become an outlet store.

Chris Orife, HospiceCare North Northumberland’s CEO, said: “Income from our retail stores (its other stores are located in Amble and Wooler) are pivotal to the implementation of our strategy, which is to provide care to more people in our dispersed communities where access to healthcare can be challenging.

“Every penny spent in our stores contributes to delivering care to patients in need in north Northumberland.

“The current Berwick store has made a huge contribution to the success of the hospice over the last nine years and we are grateful to our shop managers and volunteers for their tireless work.

“However, to increase our retail income we need to make sure that we are centrally placed to attract more customers and this is why we are opening our new shop on the Berwick high street. Our current shop in Berwick is some distance from the town’s main thoroughfare and this impacts on the funds we are able to raise from the store.

“We anticipate our existing store at Hazel Marsden House will be utilised in providing discounted goods for a period of time as our new store at Marygate starts to trade before Christmas 2024.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for HospiceCare North Northumberland and we are delighted that our retail expansion programme has started with Berwick town centre.”

HospiceCare North Northumberland will be formally recruiting for a full-time store manager and dedicated volunteers.

In the meantime, if you are interested in either role, contact retail operations manager Mark Peters for an informal chat and/or to express your interest by calling 01289 309997 or emailing [email protected]