![Richard Carley delivers food boxes to about 40 pensioners, some of whom have known him since he was a child](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317458109_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqm4L56w4cFv5P4PB-PpmHIxwW3bF5S1lmizP7TDSaQm0.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Diesel v electric – which vehicle came out on top during my food parcel deliveries this Christmas
Richard Carley switched his Citroen Berlingo diesel in for the electric version – but how did he fare?
![Richard Carley delivers food boxes to about 40 pensioners, some of whom have known him since he was a child](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317458109_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqm4L56w4cFv5P4PB-PpmHIxwW3bF5S1lmizP7TDSaQm0.jpeg?imwidth=680)
When elderly residents in the Kent village of Woodchurch discovered cucumbers on their doorsteps, they weren’t in the least surprised.
The provider of this fruit largesse was Richard Carley, a retired photographer. Born in the village in 1954, Carley delivers gratis food boxes to about 40 pensioners, some of whom have known him since he was a child. The food itself is mostly donated by the Tenterden branches of Tesco and Waitrose and local market traders, collected by Carley on weekday evenings from the stores just before they close. A wide range of produce from bread to vegetables is sorted, boxed and delivered to older villagers.
Last Christmas Carley took two tons of produce from Tesco, “but you never know what [amount] you’re going to get,” he said. “Sometimes you go home with only three loaves of bread.”
Or 400 cucumbers, hence the doorstep distribution of some of the fruit, with the remainder given to the village primary school and GP surgery, which runs a food bank, although Carley originally supplied repurposed groceries to its staff during Covid, “when they were too busy to shop for themselves”.
![The food itself is mostly donated by the Tenterden branches of Tesco and Waitrose and local market traders](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317457920_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
He uses a two-year-old Citroën Berlingo 1.5 diesel, which is essentially a van with windows and seats, and was intrigued by the idea of replacing it with an electric version, so we provided him with one, to see how easy it would be to live with. Of course, another acute consideration was the potential to reduce running costs.
Accustomed to driving a conventional car with a manual gearbox, Carley was initially a little nervous, but soon began to enjoy the e-Berlingo’s mix of silence, surging acceleration and point-and-squirt driving characteristics. He was less impressed by its lane departure warning system, which he thought interfered with negotiating narrow country roads. “How do you turn it off?” he asked.
The Citroën would be kept busy. Carley usually reckons to spend £80 a week on diesel fuel. Using a Hive 7kW home charger, the electric Berlingo would currently save him about £15 a week, while its real-world range of about 150 miles would suit the stop/start runs involved in the delivery of food parcels locally.
Carley’s supermarket benefactors use the foodiverse app, which connects suppliers of produce that would otherwise head for landfill to charities such as food banks. The app reckoned that since 2020 Carley had made 628 collections of 74,600lb of food, the equivalent of 80,927 meals, allegedly saving 240,000lb of C02.
![Accustomed to driving a conventional car with a manual gearbox, Carley was initially a little nervous, but soon began to enjoy the e-Berlingo](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317458091_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
When not supplying food boxes, Carley provides a free taxi service for their recipients for hospital, GP appointments and shopping trips. All of this is mostly self-funded, as was the construction of the Jean Mealham Pop-In Centre, a local hub that has provided a social lifeline for many of its elderly clients. Carley will be serving a Christmas Day tea and Boxing Day lunch there.
The centre began life in a large marquee, and was the location of events such as coffee mornings, but even with electric power and heaters, Carley and a group of volunteers who’d come on board to help realised that this wasn’t a realistic long-term venue.
“A local councillor came along and said, ‘You can’t have 90-year-olds in a marquee during the winter. You need to get planning permission for something permanent,’” he said.
The result is a rather swish-looking, chalet-like building with the requisite facilities as well as an enormous, cinema-style organ, one of just four in the UK and donated by its maker on the basis that it could be demonstrated to potential clients.
![When not supplying food boxes, Carley provides a free taxi service for their recipients for hospital, GP appointments and shopping trips](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317458100_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Otherwise it’s used for recitals that are part of a rolling programme of events to entertain the centre’s pensionable clients.
It was essentially self-built, often using reclaimed materials. Carley sketched what he wanted and an architect turned his ideas into local authority-friendly drawings. Builders provided their services for free; that’s how the footings were dug. Although he’s now in his mid-60s, Carley found himself acting as a slater’s apprentice, laying second-hand roof tiles sourced through eBay.
By 2019, when the building was almost finished, Carley’s sister Jean received a cancer diagnosis and died 10 weeks later; the centre is named after her and opened in 2020, just as Covid struck.
The pandemic was the impetus behind the food delivery initiative. If the elderly couldn’t get to the centre, Carley vowed to keep tabs on them, and bring them essential provisions.
We discovered all this in the staff rest room of a medium-sized Tesco store in Tenterden, Kent, where we met community champion Jan West and manager Alesha Dunne, who are Carley’s contacts when he collects food for redistribution.
According to West, local initiatives with a similar intent, such as food banks, have virtually eliminated her store’s food waste. She said there were plenty of local older people living in big houses who were asset rich but cash poor and who also needed these services. “Everyone’s feeling it,” she said.
“Tenterden has a reputation for being wealthy, but that’s not always the case,” said Dunne.
![Local supermarkets donate a wide variety of food products](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2022/12/15/TELEMMGLPICT000317457880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
There was a genuine warmth between everyone as they talked about tinsel-decorated Christmas week food boxes containing Brussels sprouts and, with luck, mince pies that would otherwise be sold for a few pence on December 27.
Carley also frequently redistributes flowers. “In some ways they’re as important as food. Being given flowers can really lift a person’s spirits,” he said.
“Isolation in rural areas is a curse,” said West. “There are people living down little lanes who can’t drive whose only company is the TV. Richard might be the only person they see all week. That’s why what he does is so important.”
Richard Carley was awarded a British Empire Medal for his work, although when the news came in an email he initially thought it was a joke. Whatever motives he uses to make all this happen – and he was enthused by the low-running costs and smoothness of the electric vehicle – Carley has clearly discovered his vocation.
“It’s made lives worth living again,” he said. “I’ve had people say to me that their parents wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the centre, because they didn’t want to live any more, and now they do. That’s a wonderful feeling and you can’t replace it with money.”