Hucknall's firefighters visited the town's 1803 RAF Air Cadet Squadron on Monday night (12 December) to pick up their contributions to the foodbank collection.

The firefighters have been encouraging local residents, schools and organisations to join their 12 days of Christmas initiative with all donations going to Hucknall Foodbank based on Vine Terrace.

The air cadets meet on Watnall Road and have around 50 cadets aged between 12 and 18-year-olds who attend regularly.

In a relatively short space of time the group were able to collect together an impressive amount of food donations which will help and benefit others in the local community.

Speaking exclusively to Hucknall Nub News, Warrant Officer Rob Carr said: "The reason that we do this charity collection is because the cadets as part of their training they have to do some community aspects as part of their Duke of Edinburgh.

"We've started teaming up with the fire brigade and helping them with the foodbank drive which at the moment is really important with the way things are going, everyone's starting to feel the pinch now. It's as local as you can get (the foodbank), and I'm all for the guys getting involved with their community and taking pride in that."

The amount of food donated was impressive. Photo Credit: Tom Surgay.

The cadets were given thorough demonstrations of, and explanations into, how the equipment aboard the fire engine works and also offered top tips on fire safety.

Nick Pratt, one of the firefighters who attended, added: "It's not just about going out there fighting fires. A lot of what we do is prevention. Any opportunity we get, we like to be out there in the community and giving a bit of advice. So this time of year, obviously we've just had Bonfire night so we'd have been out talking about Bonfire Night safety, fireworks. We're getting the cadets engaged but we're also dropping Christmas safety in as well. That bit of prevention that we've done here goes quite far, they'll go home now and talk to parents about what they've learnt."

For more information about the air cadets, click here.