I feel I have neglected my Blog in the last few weeks; I have been so busy rushing from one place to another. I must now sit down and catch up a little.

Firstly and most importantly, Kendal has won a Silver award in the Britain-in-Bloom competition. An amazing result, which we are immensely proud. I attended the results evening last night in Chester. It was held at the Race Course with representatives from all over the Country from the Channel Islands to Aberdeen.

Kendal was entered into the Large Town/ Small city category, which was incidentally the largest group with nine other Town’s making the grade. Bicester, Buxton, Caerphilly, Coleraine, Douglas, Perth, St. Helier and Whickham.

We have worked hard this year as I have mentioned in earlier entries, so a Silver recognition from the Britain-in-Bloom is a very pleasing result. The most important judges of all are however, our local community. We will continue to try to make our Town a beautiful and tidier one for us all to enjoy.

Talking of tidier, last Saturday a large group of Town and District Councillors got together to do a ‘Big Tidy Up’ We set off at 10am in our super green fluorescent tabards and litter pickers to all areas around the Town Centre. Our aim was to really highlight the need for people to use the bins and not the street or flower pots! We managed to collect around 200kg between us that’s 30 stone!! The District Council have a really good new vehicle which can access the yards and narrow alleyways around the Town centre; you may see it around the place if you are up and about early.

It will make quite a difference; it manages to get into the difficult nooks and crannies making the yards look much cleaner – lets work together and keep them that way.

I must say there was a massive amount of cigarette ends around, I know people who smoke have to go out and do it in the street, it has really highlighted the need for some sort of ashtrays, and I must have picked up at least a few hundred butt ends.