A company has marked its 20th anniversary by planting 20,000 trees in the Lake District.

Alertacall, which provides services to older people in social housing, was founded in 2004 by CEO James Batchelor.

The company was established to meet the needs of Mr Batchelor's 'staunchly independent' relatives.

Since then, tens of thousands of people across the UK have benefited from Alertacall’s services.

These include a touchscreen that enables housing providers to have better two-way contact with older people, and a service called OKEachDay, which provides daily contact from a specially trained team.

The company employs around 100 people at offices in Windermere and Kendal, Cumbria, as well as Warrington.

To celebrate its milestone anniversary, Alertacall collaborated with Buy Land Plant Trees CIC, which has been planting trees in the Lake District National Park since 2020.

Mr Batchelor met Sally Phillips, founder of Buy Land Plant Trees, at a Buckingham Palace reception for winners of The Queen’s Award For Enterprise in 2022.

Mr Batchelor said: "We got talking and I was immediately inspired by Sally’s ambition to make a long-lasting impact by planting hundreds of thousands of trees which will benefit the environment for generations to come.

"Alertacall is a business with long-term ambitions to keep growing and to benefit more and more customers across the UK.

"We want to do everything we can to help people and the environment as we go.

“As a business with our roots in the beautiful Lake District, donating the trees is a fantastic way to mark our anniversary and I am looking forward to helping plant many more in the future.”

The company has plans to plant a total of 100,000 trees in the years to come, with the aim of having one tree for each of its customers.

Ms Phillips said: "So many animals, insects and plants depend on trees and for us it’s about restoring the woodland that used to grow in the national park and future-proofing the landscape so they will be here for centuries to come.

"It’s not just about trees being beautiful, it’s about climate change and carbon sequestration and flood mitigation and providing that protection far into the future.

“100,000 trees is a really ambitious target and we are looking forward to working with Alertacall over the coming years to create forests of the future together.”