Helen Spooner and Denise Chalk, of the Haverhill-based company's community relations team, brought a car load of presents, including a bike, to add to those that generous readers had already left under our Christmas tree.

All the presents were handed over from the Echo to Annette Court and Pat Frendo, from social services, on Friday so they could be sorted out in time to be with children for Christmas.

"It's been really successful, I was quite surprised," said Genzyme's Helen. "It had a high response to it, I think everybody in the whole firm got involved."

All the presents will go to children in Haverhill.

Annette and Pat will be familiar to Echo readers as they have collected the Christmas presents from the Echo for a number of years, while working at Haverhill Family Resource Centre.

The presents were distributed to Haverhill families on Friday and Saturday.

The Echo's Derek Bish donned a Santa outfit (above) to hand over the presents to the two women.