Shift of focus to find county's best village
A change of focus is on the cards for judges in Staffordshire's Best Kept Village this year – with less emphasis on how dirty dogs have left their mark.
A change of focus is on the cards for judges in Staffordshire's Best Kept Village this year – with less emphasis on how dirty dogs have left their mark.
The state of telephone boxes and recycling are also going to count for less.
Instead, care and maintenance of churchyards will earn villages more marks on the scorecard. The ruling was made at the December meeting of the Best Kept Village Working Group, run by the Community Council of Staffordshire. John Perry is new chairman of the working group.
He said: "After considering comments from some of last year's entrants, the views of our volunteer judges and our sponsors we felt that the marks available for telephone call boxes, recycling awareness and the issue of dog fouling could be reduced slightly.
"While all these remain important we felt that we could redistribute those marks to the care of communal buildings and their surroundings and for the care and maintenance of churchyards."
The Working Group also decided to introduce a new element into the judging based on village signs. These include those at the entrances to villages and those within a village giving directions to local features.
The children's poster competition, which has been a feature of the main competition for many years, will be expanded in 2009.
Entries will be invited from children in all first and middle schools whether or not their village has entered the BKV Competition.
The working group says it hopes this will generate increased interest in the ideas behind the BKV competition in future generations.
Mr Perry added: "There is good news, because we will not put up the entry fee for the 2009 competition and we intend to increase the prize money next year. This has been made possible by the wonderful support that we have been promised."
Support for the contest includes sponsorship by Rubery Owen Holdings, Lafarge UK and Staffordshire County Council.
Mr Perry also said the competition has been greatly helped by 'media partners' such as the Express & Star, which has supported BKV for nearly 40 years.
Anyone interested in judging BKV 2009 should contact Liz Sanderson at the Community Council of Staffordshire on 01785 242525.
