POACHED salmon and cherry pie are a gourmet's delight being served up next week in thousands of local homes.

Next Wednesday meals-on-wheels provided by the Community Meals Service will be of the five star variety.

The slap-up menu is to celebrate the fourth annual National Meals on Wheels Day.

And, as a special thank-you to everyone involved in preparing and delivering meals, a tea party has been arranged. Guests from the meal preparation kitchens will join local councillors, WRVS members and volunteers at a celebration feast.

The Council's Social Services department began co-ordinating deliveries in spring 1996 and the service has since expanded in to a seven day service dishing-out a mixture of 5,000 hot and frozen meals each week.

Cllr Alan Stephenson, social services committee chairman, said: "The service is a vital ingredient of our support of elderly and vulnerable people who choose to remain as independent as possible in their own homes.

"If it were possible we would say thank you every day to all the people who work so hard to make the service run efficiently.

"National Meals on Wheels day gives us the opportunity to remind local citizens of this service which they themselves may one day need, also to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone involved, especially the volunteers.

"Without them the high quality of service we provide would be a lot harder to achieve."

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