SEEND has been awarded the ‘Best Newcomer’ award during this year’s Best Kept Village Awards – the first time they have entered the competition in over 10 years. Judges commended their ‘strong sense of identity and community’.
This year’s CPRE Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition has been sponsored by The Hills Group for a sixth consecutive year, and judging is now complete. The first round of the competition saw the expert judging teams from the Wiltshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England putting each village under the microscope.
Thirty-six villages throughout the county were tested against the competition criteria which look for tidiness, cleanliness, presentation and village community spirit.
One of the judging teams commented on the standard of this year’s competition saying, “We were impressed with the lack of litter and fly posting in the villages, showing a strong sense of pride in the local area. It was a pleasure to visit all the villages. All villages were all maintained to such an impressive standard, it was very difficult to separate them.”
For the fourth year running, an award has been made available to encourage villages which have not entered the Best Kept Village Competition for the previous five years to give it a go. It comes with a £150 cash prize and a certificate. CPRE Wiltshire hopes it will encourage even more villages to enter in 2019.
This year’s winner was Seend, considered by the judges to be “a delightful Wiltshire village with a strong sense of identity and community”.
Seend also were in the running for ‘best medium village’ after winning the first round of judging and won 3rd place in Wiltshire, scoring 85 points to Biddestone’s winning 90 points.
CPRE, organisers of the competition said, “Finally, it is important to point out that this competition could not take place without the very generous contributions of our sponsors, the support of Wiltshire Council and of course the immense hard work put in by individual parish councils and villagers. It is a joint effort, but one we feel benefits Wiltshire and in particular, the participating villages.”
