Parish Council

Calor Village of the Year

WELL DONE – KING’S SOMBORNE

We all know that King’s Somborne is a lively village in which to live – and this has been confirmed by the Village being chosen as the winning Village within Test Valley District in the national Village of the Year Competition 2007. The competition is sponsored by Calor Ltd Rural Sponsorship Programme and is designed to identify community spirit in villages and small towns thoughout the UK.

Heats are held within local district or borough boundaries and from these winners the winning Hampshire county village entry is identified and goes forward to the national competition where the overall national winning village is selected.

The winning county village was Wickham, King’s Somborne won the competition within Test Valley. The judges assessed village life under a variety of headings – community life, business involvement, provision of facilities for the young and the old, affordable housing programmes, the environment and use made of information technology. In particular, the judges were looking at whole community involvement and provision of facilities, how residents were encouraged to participate, active voluntary and organised activities, neighbourhood care – basically what makes the village a special place in which to live. We scored very highly on the variety of activities available for our residents and the extent to which many of these were run by volunteers; these were forcibly expressed by the 22 villagers who gave an informal presentation to the judges on their involvement in the village activities during the assessment which took place on 3 July 2007.

After these morning presentations, which took place in the Working Men’s Club with coffee and biscuits, the Clerk took the judges on a drive around the village to reinforce the points made earlier. The judges then retired to The Crown to consider their verdict which was made public on 30 August. Presentations will be made at the INTECH Science Centre on Saturday 13th October 2007.

I would like to thank all those who took part in the competition and made it such a successful event; it just goes to prove what we already know – that King’s Somborne is a great place in which to live.

Peter Storey

Clerk to King’s Somborne Parish Council

3 Sep 07