HELPFUL Holidays, the Chagford-based holiday cottage specialist, is to donate more than £60,000 to a range of leading charities operating in and around the West Country.

The first four to benefit are Devon Air Ambulance Trust, the Marine Conservation Society, Farms for City Children and the RNLI.

Many other regional and national charities will also receive donations throughout the year. ShelterBox has already received a donation of £1,000 for its Haiti appeal and Devon Wildlife Trust has recently received £500.

Helpful Holidays generated its charitable fund from the VAT saved during the recent 'VAT holiday'. Rather than taking extra profit or discounting its already published prices, Helpful Holidays donated the 2.5 % VAT cut to the charitable fund.

Helpful Holidays general manager Moray Bowater said: 'We decided to hold our prices at the same level and not introduce a price reduction. The VAT change made such a small difference to the cost of an individual holiday, we knew it would make no difference to our sales. But we book over 17,000 holidays annually and we knew those small amounts would add up to quite a bit over the year.

'It seemed a golden opportunity to raise some cash for the charities being hit hard by the recession. We've collected it all over the past year and now have a pot of money, which we can pass on to the charities we support.'  

Each year, Helpful Holidays adopts a charity and invites its holidaymakers to make donations  when booking their holidays- this year it is the Devon Air Ambulance Trust.

At the end of the year, Helpful Holidays matches the sum generated by its holidaymakers. In 2009, more than £2,600 was donated to the RNLI.

This year, all four of the charities Helpful Holidays regularly supports will now benefit from this scheme, as well as many others.