More than 200 toys and gifts have been donated to a Pembrokeshire Christmas toy appeal thanks to the generosity of a local school and its wider community.

Milford Haven School’s Tags on the Tree project has been running for a number of very successful years, each year supporting PATCH and its annual Toy Appeal.

In early November a very special Christmas tree was decorated with tags, each tag featured the anonymised details of a child living within the local community who has been affected by deprivation referred to PATCH for the Toy Appeal.

Members of the school staff team then chose a tag, bought a gift for that child and popped it back under the tree. The presents are then collected by PATCH in time for delivery for Christmas.

This year the school received multiple requests from members of the local community asking if they could support the project.

“These requests were truly inspiring and confirmed what we already knew about our amazing community, and that is that people want opportunities to be generous and help each other,” said headteacher, Ms Morris.

The school decided to take Tags on the Tree on Tour and put up Christmas trees with tags in three other locations; Milford Haven Library, Neyland Library and Hubberston and Hakin Community Centre.

Milford Haven School staff and locals who collected tags from the trees in the three other locations last week donated more than 200 presents to PATCH for the children of the community.

“We are extremely grateful to the support of our community and would like to thank the three locations for getting involved and helping us to expand our project far past the gates of Milford Haven School,” said Ms Morris.

She said that the community really came together to make the project a success, with one past Milford Haven resident donating £100 towards gifts for the tags in the town’s library.

Milford Haven Round Table also got involved and purchased gifts for 10 tags from the Milford Haven School Tree.

“The last few years have been very humbling for many of us and we are possibly aware now more than ever before of the greater need within our school community,” said Ms Morris.

“I am extremely proud of all of the staff at Milford Haven School that make this project possible and this year I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Milford Haven and Neyland Library and Hubberston and Hakin Community Centre for joining forces with us to double our usual donations.

“This is just one of many projects that we run to inject as much support as we can into our community.

"With Christmas in particular a challenge for so many of us we hope that the little bit of help we give will go a long way.

“Our amazing staff team and indeed the whole community of Milford Haven is well known for its generosity, so a huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported this project. This is evidence that together we can make a real difference to local families and the Christmas they experience.”