A SURGE of generosity meant a leading charity shop had to close its doors to donations - because they were blocking a fire escape.

Age Concern on Market Street, Darwen, became so full that the team of two paid staff and 15 volunteers put a bar on donations for two weeks and only started accepting goods again on Monday.

Vicky Shepard, services development manager, said: "There are three charity shops in Darwen and it's not really enough to cope with the number of people that live in the town.

"We have had so many people bringing things in that we had to stop for a two week period.

"People are very generous in Darwen and we are very grateful for that. We just couldn't take anything else because the fire exits would have been blocked and that would have posed a safety risk." Donors were asked to take their goods to another charity shop or hang on to them until stocks had reduced.

Vicky said: "We don't have a problem with the turnover of goods but when they are brought in initially, we have to sort them out, clean them and arrange them all.

"It can take quite a long time and of course we only have so many pairs of hands."

The block on donations had a knock-on effect for the other two charity shops in Darwen.

Pat Monks, manager of Broken Arcs Christian Charity shop on Duckworth Street, said: "We are getting a lot of donations at the moment but we have a lot of storage space so we are all right for the time being."

Pat Roscoe-Smith, manager of the Help the Aged shop on School Street, said: "It's very unpredictable and there are always times when lots of donations are coming through the door.

"We have lots of volunteers here so we rarely have to stop donations coming in.

"However, you can never tell when that time might come because we've had a van full of goods in this week and if we get people through the door we will struggle."

Vicky from Age Concern said: "This is just a problem in Darwen - Blackburn doesn't suffer because it has more shops.

"The key is really to have more shops in the town but then you have the problem of selling the goods and whether it will attract the customers. It's a catch 22 situation."

Age Concern is appealing to prospective volunteers to contact them on 01254 266620.