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Workers to scale Ben Nevis for charity

A Black Country company is scaling its third mountain in seven months as it continues its fundraising mission.

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Staff at Premium Choice are preparing to tackle Ben Nevis

Employees at Wolverhampton car insurance group Premium Choice are preparing to take on Britian's tallest mountain Ben Nevis this month.

The 21-strong team are tackling 'Operation Ben Nevis' on Sunday April 28 to raise money for Birmingham Heartlands Hospital and Dementia UK.

This comes after the same group climbed Scafell Pike on December 9 2018, where they raised over £2,000 for a disabled Halesowen boy, and when they raised £2,500 for men's suicide prevention charity CALM, by climbing Snowdon in September 2018.

For their upcoming climb, the group have so far raised more than £600 on their Go Fund Me page, and a combined £1,100 from raffles and fundraisers in their office and at a fundraising event at Fordhouses Cricket Club.

Performance manager at the company, and organiser of the charity climbs, Darren Nally, said: "One of the manager's here, his wife has leukaemia, and the ward 19 family room at the hospital have been really good to them.

"It's local too, being in Birmingham, and they help a lot of people.

"We've had a lot of prizes donated by companies for our raffles, we've had tickets for Cadbury World, Cosford Air Show and local comedy clubs, they've been phenomenal.

"Every week we do dress down Friday's for charity and our employees pick what charities the money goes to.

"Over the year we've raised a lot, with the mountain climbs, and these days in the office.

"We're always looking for charities to help and especially local ones.

"We've all had personal circumstances with charities so it means a lot to me and the rest of the staff.

"The cricket club were brilliant for us with the venue, it really helped the fundraising.

"It was a quiz and curry night, there was only 60 of us as it was midweek, but it went well and has set us up well to do it again."

The climbing team had three members of their group pull out after two climbers went missing on Ben Nevis in February, but despite this, Darren says that the team are persevering and have been assured they will be safe.

He added: "We have been assured that our route is safe, but I'm sure it'll be more taxing than the other climbs.

"It will take six or seven hours up and down, so we're all taking it seriously and training for it and know what we need to do.

"We could have easily waited until July to do this but we wanted to do it in April so there was some snow at the top."

The group have no plans to stop their fundraising effort here, as they're already looking ahead to their future money raising adventures.

Darren said: "After this, we're going to have a two month break, and then pick something different, and not to do with climbing mountains.

"We did want to make this one local with charities but we didn't get many replies back.

"So next time we're going to try and help Compton Care, and give back with painting and gardening, as well as with money raised."

People can donate to the Go Fund Me page by visiting www.gofundme.com/6xzr600