Trolleys were swapped with baskets for a dash around a convenience store to grab supplies for a foodbank.

St Ives’ Mayor Councillor Brian Luter and councillors Debbie Townsend and Peter Smith were invited to the Costcutter in Ramsey Road on Tuesday (December 23) to raid the shop’s shelves for food.

The council trio filled up their baskets, with the contents donated to the St Ives Foodbank to help boost its supplies over the Christmas period.

Brian Anderson, who owns the store, told The Hunts Post: “It’s a great time of year to give something back. We had a revamp and opened the shop under the Costcutter name in November and I used to watch Supermarket Sweep so I thought we could do a sweep in the store.

“The mayor and the councillors were enthusiastic, came in and fleeced me. I had the mayor in the shop and he left without paying!

“In total, there was about £400 of food that they collected to be donated and I was quite happy to do it.”

Cllr Luter said: “I was impressed by the store. They were quite generous with the time they had given us as they allowed us to go around in five minutes.

“We were advised by the foodbank to pick up food suitable for storage, such as dried pasta, tinned fish, cereals and coffee but no alcohol or fizzy drinks. However anything we picked up that wasn’t suitable, the owner Brian replaced it with something suitable.

“I also picked up some chocolate biscuits as there would be some children who would need the foodbank.

“My basket certainly got heavy, as Debbie helped out and put lots of jam in mine so I had a lot of glass jars.”

Mr Anderson, 47, took over the off licence about five years ago, after Threshers went into receivership, to own the shop that his father Peter ran for more than 40 years.

“I was born in the home next door and grew up with the shop, helping out when on my school holidays,” Mr Anderson said.

“We decided to convert the off licence into a food store as we can take on the big boys, like Tesco.

“I want to do another project, but I don’t know what it will be yet.”