West Ham United co owner David Sullivan is to make a personal £3,500 donation to cover the shortfall in match day donations from the five postponed home matches from Irons Supporting Foodbanks.

Founder John Ratomski explained ‘we were collecting an average of £700 in food and cash donations for the foodbank before our home matches. After lockdown and the cancellation of the remaining 5 games we would have been about £3,500 short in our donations. After reading about the shortfall Mr Sullivan has kindly stepped in to personally cover this amount. Both we and Newham Foodbank are delighted with this contribution. We’ve had steady support from the club since we started 5 months ago and this donation is a further sign of the club’s support of those in need in the Newham community’. Dave Kelly from the national Fans Supporting Foodbanks group added ’we’re absolutely delighted to be working in collaboration with fans from across the whole country’.

In a further gesture, Mr Sullivan is donating £1,500 to the Merseyside PPE Hub who manufactured the 1,000 PPE visors distributed last week to the Barts Health NHS Trust hospitals, Spire London East Hospital, Brentwood Community Hospital and Barking Hospital. Newham Council and Aspire Community also received visors for their care homes and other frontline staff.

Manager John Parry at the PPE Hub commented ‘This is an unbelievable sign of fan solidarity, doesn’t matter what the team colours, in the current pandemic PPE doesn’t wear colours and we at Merseyside PPE are happy to support our friends at West Ham and are so grateful of their kind donations’.

This donation will provide for raw materials to make over 2,100 PPE visors for further distribution. Ratomski added ‘This additional generosity will make an extraordinary difference to a great many lives’.