Two newsagents offering a lifeline to locals during coronavirus pandemic

Emery's News in Holyrood Street and Chard Newsagents in Fore Street are both expanded their services to help people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Both have seen an increase in some stocks' sales, such as household essentials and hand gel.

Andrew Emery said: "So far we hadn’t noticed to much other than selling more of the items that’s all over the news, but this morning has been very quite so far.

"We have had a couple customers cancel their newspaper delivery’s ready for when the over 70s isolation kicks in.

"We are trying to get more stock in when we can. We can only get so many deliveries a week but we are trying and when we do get bits in we are posting on social media.

"We are now offering a delivery service in the evenings for larger items people might need and we can leave on door step and take payment over the phone.

"We will stay open seven days a week, 5am to 10pm throughout this. We are here for the community."

Les Gilbert is the director of Post2 Ltd, and owner of Chard News in Fore Street.

He said: "We have seen an increased demand for some of the household essentials such as cleaning materials.

"Whilst we have long since run out of hand gel, we have so far managed to maintain stocks of hand wash, toilet roll, detergents and some medicines.

"We have a further delivery on Wednesday and we hope to introduce some items into the store that we think customers might need as things move forward.

"This includes long life milk, part baked bread, tinned goods and some chilled items. As a small business we can adapt and change.

"We are asking customers with electricity and gas cards to top up as often as possible as the situation is obviously very fast moving. We are keeping up to date with Government advice.

"That said, our wholesalers do seem to be relatively well stocked and so in line with many other retailers we do ask customers to be considerate and only buy what they need."