Kent County Council is to support Charlton Athletic's Community Trust to the tune of £375,000 over the next five years.

The club works in collaboration with the KCC, Kent Police and fire services to run the project. The Community Programme works on estates in the evenings across the county such as Gravesend's King's Farm and Ashford's Stanhope plus secondary schools where health and fitness programmes, workshops and social responsibilty have been introduced.

The Trust employs 47 full-time staff and 170 part-time coaches with more than 500,000 children participating in the 52 different community initiatives it manages every year.

"We were absolutely delighted to learn of Kent Count Council's decision," said Charlton chief executive Peter Varney.