Press Archive

Eastry comes out on Top in Kent Village of the Year

The overall winner of this year’s Kent Village of the Year competition has been revealed. The competition is run by Ruth Pascoe on behalf of Action with Communities in Rural Kent and sponsored by Calor, the UK’s leading supplier of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), with additional support from BBC Radio Kent and Kent Reliance Building Society. The competition judges communities on six aspects of village life with categories in Building Community Life, Business, Young People, Older People, Environmental Action and (judged separately) Information Technology.

The village of Eastry has been declared Kent’s Village of the Year for 2005. Other winners in the competition will be announced at a presentation evening being held on Thursday 8th September in Harrietsham. For the first year the winning village in every category will receive a cash prize. The winner of the Building Community Life category will receive £500 and winners of the other five categories will each receive £250. The additional prize money is thanks to competition support from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), which is providing additional funding in 2005 at both county and national level to enhance the newly established Building Community Life category.

Eastry beat off competition from 26 other villages to gain the overall title, achieving the highest combined marks in the Building Community Life, Business, Young People, Older People and Environmental Action categories. As the overall winner, the village will also be going forward to represent the county in the prestigious national English Calor Village of the Year^® competition, with the opportunity of following in the footsteps of Challock last year and gaining recognition at national level as well as a share in the £36,000 prize fund. Eastry will be competing in the South England region of the competition against villages from Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Surrey, Sussex (East), Sussex (West) and Oxfordshire.

Competition organiser, Ruth Pascoe, commented: “Eastry was an excellent contender in this year’s competition and I would like to congratulate the village on its success. It wasn’t easy for the judges to select an overall winner as the standards were very good throughout and the competition very close. I very much look forward to being able to celebrate the success of all the successful villages at the presentation event in September.”

Further information is available from Action with Communities in Rural Kent online at www.ruralkent.org.uk, by email at info@ruralkent.org.uk, or by telephoning 01303 850 816.

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