ALTON Scouts are asking the to help them bag a share of a supermarket chain’s £12.5m kitty.

The scouts are bidding to secure the cash from Tesco’s Bags of Help initiative to help them pay for improvements to their Cabin building in Anstey Park.

The supermarket has teamed up with Groundwork for the scheme, which enables the awarding of grants of £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000, raised from the Government-imposed 5p plastic bag levy, to to environmental and greenspace projects. Three groups in each of Tesco’s 416 regions have been shortlisted to receive the cash and the 8th Alton Scout Group is one of them.

From next month shoppers wil be being invited to to vote for who they think should take away the top grant. Alton shoppers can vote at Tesco Express stores in Anstey Lane and Oak Green shopping parade on the A31 at Four Marks. The other two contenders for the cash in the region that includes Alton are Treloar Trust, which is are seeking funding for outdoor musical instruments for disabled students, and Alton Town Council, which is looking for support for outdoor improvements at Anstey Park.

All three projects will receive money from the initiative, but shoppers’ votes will determine how much.

Beaver leader Charley Dugdale said Alton’s Scouts are seeking funding to develop the outside area around the Cabin to provide extra learning space, which will include privacy fencing and the installation of wheelchair-friendly access. They estimate the works will cost around £12,000.

She added: “With outside cooking equipment and living fences, we will be taking the core values of Scouting and moving them back outside to give our Scouts the best experiences they possibly can have. We really need your votes to ensure we can make a difference to the facilities at our adventure headquarters. With changes to our current boundaries, we have been left with an area that is unloved and needs the fun injected back into it.”

Votes can be cast from October 31 to November 13 using tokens handed out at checkouts.

This is the second round of the Bags of Help initiative: in the the first. earlier this year, some eight million shoppers nationwide voted.

Lindsey Crompton, head of community at Tesco, said: “The first round was a fantastic success.

“In total 1,170 groups were awarded £8,000, £10,000 or £12,000. That’s a massive £11.7m invested in local projects.“We are absolutely delighted to open the voting for round two. There are some fantastic projects on the shortlists and we can’t wait to see them come to life in hundreds of communities.”

Groundwork’s national chief executive Graham Duxbury said: “Bags of Help is giving our communities the funding and the support to create better, healthier and greener places for everyone to enjoy.

“We’ve been thrilled to see the diversity of projects that have applied for funding. They’re all fantastic projects that make a real difference in neighbourhoods.”