Christmas shoppers will face a trial of conscience at a charity giveaway in Dudley next month.

Dudley-based charity St Thomas’s Community Network has come up with a novel plan to shift a backlog of donated stock.

Volunteers will set out two van loads of unpriced goods and members of the public will be allowed to pick up anything they fancy before handing over whatever cash they choose for their shopping. Items on offer will include toys, books, shoes, pictures, pushchairs and household goods.

Another charity, Furniture Store, is also contributing to the self-pricing event.

St Thomas’s Network chief executive Janet Hilken admitted the sale was a gamble but said she was confident people would respond well to the idea.

“We realise this is very experimental but we have faith in people’s sense of fair play,” she said.

“We like to try new ideas at St Thomas’s Network and we are keen to get these items out to the people who need them.”

Deb Brownlee, community enterprise development worker for the charity, said volunteers needed to clear stock after losing much of its storage space.

“Over a year ago we lost our storage area at short notice. We also carried out the sorting in that area so in addition to losing our storage area we had to halve the size of our already quite small shop to create sorting space,” she said.

“We have pretty good systems in place now to deal with incoming donations but we still have items stored from the past so we thought this might be a good idea to try.”

The event takes place at the Surestart base in Watsons Green Road, Kates Hill on December 2 from 2pm to 8pm and December 3 from 11am to 5pm.

Admission is free and all proceeds will go towards the work of St Thomas’s Community Network which is based in Beechwood Road, Kates Hill.