A charity is working to repair its facility after a freak fire caused £20,000 of damage.

Gillingham Street Angels boss Neil Charlick was at home, with his wife, Tracy, when he received notification of a problem at the charity’s warehouse at Jenkins Dale. in Chatham.

The 54-year-old told KentOnline: “I got an email that one of the security cameras has gone down, and then within a couple of minutes another one went down.

“We assumed someone had broken into the building, but when we arrived we realised there was a fire.

“I foolishly went into the building myself to try and put it out but the flames were too much.

“Tracy called the fire brigade and they arrived quickly and were first class - it could have been a disaster if they hadn’t come.”

Mr Charlick - who has worked at the charity for seven years - later learned the incident was caused by a fault with a switched-off tumble dryer in the engineering room.

Fortunately, nobody was injured in the blaze - which took hold just after 5.30pm last Friday - but it has cost the award-winning charity thousands of pounds right at its busiest time of the year.

The room was full of electricals which staff fix and send on to their charity shops to be sold.

Mr Charlick said: “The electrics is going to be the big thing to repair.

“It’s taken out a lot of the lights and alarms, and done maybe up to £20,000 worth of damage.

“And it’s that time of year when we’re really busy as well - a lot of people need our help.”

Gillingham Street Angels supports people living in Medway affected by homelessness, financial hardship and food poverty.

Feeling roughly 25,000 people a month, the organisation runs food banks and community soup kitchens.

But its team also help in other ways, with school uniform banks, charity stores, recycling programmes, and a selection of other free health and wellbeing services.

Mr Charlick says his staff and volunteers have done amazing work since the accident to get the charity back to working at full strength.

“We’ve moved a lot of our stuff to another place this week, we’ve had electricians and staff helping this week so that we can keep on doing what we do,” he said.

“They’ve done amazing work - I’m privileged to have a great team of people.

“While we repair the damage, we’ll get back to work - we still need to make sure the people in Medway have a good Christmas.”

A spokesperson for the fire service said: "Kent Fire and Rescue Service was called at 5.38pm on December 13 to a warehouse on Jenkins Dale, Chatham to reports of a fire.

"Five fire engines attended and crews, wearing breathing apparatus, used hose reel jets to extinguish the flames.

"There were no reported injuries, and the cause is believed to be accidental and linked to an electrical fault."