Market Tavern wins MP’s Pub of the Year competition

Local MP Michelle Donelan has announced that popular Melksham pub The Market Tavern are the winners of her Pub of the Year 2023 Competition, after more than 2,000 public votes.

The MP launched the search to find the best pub in her Chippenham constituency, which covers Melksham, last month, with all pubs in the constituency listed in a first round of public voting. The 10 local pubs with the highest number of votes then went through to a second round of voting to determine the Pub of the Year 2023 winner.

Michelle Donelan launched the competition to help celebrate all of our local pubs and how important they are to the community, and encourage people to support them. Since becoming the MP for the area in 2015, she has championed small, local and independent businesses in the community and raised issues affecting businesses in the area in Parliament and with the government ministers. This most recently included holding a packed digital training event at the state-of-the-art Business Cyber Centre in Chippenham, which offered free advice and mentoring to 70 local businesses.

Whilst marking National Beer Day on Thursday 15th June, The Market Tavern in Melksham was announced by the local MP as the winners of the competition. More than 2,200 votes across the two rounds were cast in total.

Michelle Donelan will be inviting a cabinet minister to visit The Market Tavern to present them with their trophy over the summer, which is an exciting opportunity to talk about why the Tavern is so special and how important it is to the community.

Amazing team

“A huge congratulations to the whole team at The Market Tavern,” she said. “I know that Robert, Lorraine, Steve and their amazing team play a huge role in the community in Melksham, including raising money for many local charities and good causes, so this is very much deserved and a very worthy winner indeed! The pub itself also has a long and varied history in Melksham.

“A huge well done to all of the pubs in the constituency, it was a very close vote and the competition was all about celebrating our local pubs and encouraging people to support them. Pubs are the backbone of our community, supporting our local economy and bringing our towns and villages together, so I am always keen to support them however I can, and it was fantastic to see how popular the competition has been.”

Absolutely delighted

The team at the Tavern said, “We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have been voted the Chippenham Constituency Pub of the Year!

“Thank you to all of you who voted for us, but more importantly we would like to thank everyone who voted for their favourite pub, even if it wasn’t us.

“It has been a trying couple of years for the hospitality industry, and being appreciated by votes in a competition such as this will make a huge morale boost for everyone in the trade. Thank you again and we hope to serve you soon.”