BLACKBURN'S biggest shopping centre says Christmas has come early after naming Secret Santa as its charity of the year for 2021.

The Mall has supported Secret Santa, based below the Clock Tower on King William Street and founded by husband and wife team Phil and Karen Boulding, for many years, donating a free shop unit in 2019.

Since then the charity has expanded from providing Christmas presents to children who would otherwise not receive anything during the festive period to becoming a lifeline for people of all ages and backgrounds and now supports families during Eid, distributes Easter eggs, helps with period poverty, sources prom wear for school leavers, brings lonely people together, organises food and meals for those in need.

Mr Boulding said: "It is an absolute honour to be named as The Mall’s charity of the year and we are really excited to take our fantastic relationship with the team even further.

"When we were gifted the unit in 2019 it catapulted us into a new era and since then we have been able to offer a helping hand to thousands of vulnerable people across the borough.

"We are blown away with the new shop signage and donations so far and with the help of everyone at The Mall we are looking forward to reaching more communities in need in the coming weeks and months."

The Mall has also helped to support the charity this month by paying £540 for the Secret Santa’s shop unit to be revamped with new signage.

The Church Street shopping centre has also already raised £160 through 'in centre' activities such as collection points and staff initiatives and is donating £3000 of IT equipment to the Secret Santa team.

The Mall general manager Loraine Jones said: "We are absolutely delighted to name Secret Santa as our charity of the year.

"It is our first official charity of the year since before the pandemic started as we have spent the last 18 months helping a whole host of deserving causes.

"We raised more than £5,000 for the Poppy Appeal before the second lockdown in November 2020 and we donated £2,000 to the Blackburn with Darwen Food Resilience Alliance this winter.

"We have been working with Phil and his team at Secret Santa for many years and he has really gone above and beyond to help so many different communities as part of a huge collective local response to Covid-19, so they thoroughly deserve to be chosen.

"The new store front looks amazing and it is great that they can make use of the IT equipment we have donated.

"Our team is now coming up with exciting ways we can further increase our fundraising for them this year."

The Secret Santa store is welcoming donations of toys and gifts.