VOLUNTEER staff will be keeping Minehead’s RNLI shop open through the winter to take advantage of growing numbers of out-of-season visitors.

The shop, attached to the Quay West lifeboat station, is one of the main sources of fund-raising for the local RNLI branch and is staffed daily from March to October.

But manager Ann Tilbury said an experiment in weekend opening had been so successful last winter that it was being repeated.

This winter, the shop will be open for business from 11am to 3pm at weekends from November 5 to New Year’s Day, with the exception of Christmas Day.

It will reopen for the half-term holiday from February 11 to 19 before full-time opening resumes on March 18.

Lifeboat station shops around the country contribute towards the £9 million a year the charity raises from trading.

Ann said it had become a far more important source of income in recent years following improvements to the range of merchandise.

“They’ve moved away from being merely souvenir shops where you bought a postcard or a pen and are successfully trading items such as greetings cards and top quality, lifeboat-themed clothing,” she said.

“There are very few times during the winter when there aren’t several thousand visitors in Minehead at the weekend and our experience last winter showed this was a great opportunity to increase our income.”

Minehead’s RNLI fund-raising team generated another £500 for the charity last weekend after staging a fish supper in the lifeboat house with the help of Minehead-based Paradise Catering, part of a national campaign which saw hundreds of local branches running similar events.