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Better Neighbourhood Awards – Gardening Competition 2010

The Gardening Competition is an annual event that links in with the Better Neighbourhoods Plan. It is a tenant led initiative.

The annual gardening competition returned this year with some gardens better than ever! The official launch date was the 10th May and the Gardening Competition working group (made up of tenants and staff of WALH) celebrated by visiting Kildare Grange Sheltered Housing Scheme in Hindley for photo opportunities and a buffet.

Once again volunteers from across the borough organised a garden competition to be proud of, with this years being one of the most successful ever. With the standards of the gardens extremely high, this years competition was tougher than ever. A huge amount of 219 entrants were received, an increase of 78 from last years competition. 

On behalf of the Gardening Competition Group, we are pleased to announce the results of the first ever sheltered housing gardening competition.

Winner - Mr & Mrs Hardman, Atherton House, Atherton

Runner ups

Mr Crook, Thorburn House, Pemberton 

Mrs Morris, Roadside Court, Golborne

Mrs Vernal and Mr Reed, Greenfields, Beech Hill

All Residents, Kildare Grange

Results for the Best Young Gardener's -

Ages 8 and under

1st   Caitlin and Lexie Taylor, Hindley

2nd  Emily Critchley, Ashton-In-Makerfield

3rd   Katie Aldred, Shakerley

Ages 9 - 12       

1st    Natalie Halliwell, Haigh

2nd   Paul Hendley, Marsh Green

3rd    Melissa Jones, Beech Hill                      

Boroughwide results (1st place) -

Communal - Residents of Sussex Close, Hindley

Baskets & Containers- Eunice Cadman, Beech Hill

Ornamental - Peter Corrigan, Astley

Traditional - Ken Wilding, Hindley

Congratulations and thank you to all tenants and residents for taking part in the competition and we hope to see you in next years gardening competition.

The Customer Involvement team run training sessions throughout each year for our tenants to attend. We run a range of courses, including 'Microsoft Word' and 'Excel' basics for those of you new to computers, and sessions like 'Treasurer', 'Secretary', 'Chair' and 'Customer Involvement' training for those of you on groups or with aspirations to set up a community group in your area.

The training sessions for last year have been well attended and comments from attendees have been very positive. Everyone has found the sessions very enjoyable and informative.

To ensure as many tenants as possible are able to attend, our training sessions are open to all tenants and residnets of Wigan and Leigh Housing. We have published the training dairy below with dates of training sessions for this year and we will continue to update this when new courses are added.

If you would like to attend any training or can think of any other courses we can possibly run or even courses that you may want to run for our tenants and residents, please contact the Customer Involvement Team on the free phone number below.

• Training diary July edition (1,059kb) .pdf

Tenants Conference

Last years Annual Tenants Conference was held at St Peters Pavillion, Hindley on 25th September with the theme based on 'Communities working together can beat the recession'.

The Conference was supported by a very high satisfaction figure of 96%, the best so far! To find out more go on Tenants Conference 2009 under Getting Involved.

The year, the annual Tenants Conference is set to be on Thursday 30th September at Haigh Hall, Wigan. The Conference will be based on the theme 'Bridging the gap through healthy living'.

Watch this space for more information.

• Customer Involvement Update - August / September (496kb).pdf

If you're interested in coming along to, or helping out with any of the events mentioned above don't hesitate to contact the Customer Involvement Team for free on 0800 389 7652