The Department of Environmental, food and rural affairs are supporting people who are vulnerable and have no way of accessing food but who are able to shop online. They are offering priority shopping slots with both Tesco and Iceland.

If you feel you would benefit from one of these slots please contact the Essex Wellbeing Service who will discuss all options with you and process your request.

Woman helping with shopping

On completion of your request for a slot, the following will happen:

Tesco
  1. Tesco will process referrals overnight daily (on weekdays, not on weekends or bank holidays), If you already have a Tesco.com account, when Tesco receives your details, you will have the priority slots activated on the next working day.
  2. You won't receive an email telling you about the slot until the next day after the slot is allocated (i.e. Wednesday if you made the call on Monday) but the slot will be in your account from the Tuesday.
  3. If you don’t already have a Tesco.com account, the Tesco team will pass your email address to their comms team and the comms team will email you on a Tuesday or a Friday to ask you to set up an account. Once you have done that, this will be processed overnight with other matched customers and receive prioritised access to slots as per (1) and (2) above.
  4. To avoid having to wait until a Tuesday or Friday, if you require a slot and do not have an account then please set up a Tesco account straight away, so that you can be matched overnight.
  5. The priority slots have an 8-hour delivery window – hour of delivery is notified by SMS on morning of delivery.
  6. There is a minimum order of £40, or for orders less than this there is a £4 basket charge. Maximum order is 80 items. 100% coverage. £2 delivery charge for all slots.
Iceland
  1. A Passphrase will be given to you by the Call Handler at Essex Wellbeing.
  2. The passphrase can be used for only the individual it is initially allocated to, and you will get indefinite use of it.
  3. The three word passphrase, when entered on the Iceland website enables you to access delivery slots before they are put on general release.
  4. The ordering time slot is 9-11am on a Thursday
  5. You can do a shop and save a basket in advance of this time period: you can create a basket and return to the site and the basket will remain for up to 14 days as long as you login to your account.
  6. Minimum order of £25, plus £2 delivery charge. Free next day delivery on orders over £35.

Get in touch

The Supermarket Priority Slots are no longer available - but for all other health and wellbeing needs, please contact us on 0300 303 9988 or email provide.essexwellbeing@nhs.net to talk to one of our friendly team.

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