Tidy Towns judging gets underway

No ‘on the ground’ judging due to Covid

Judging of the SuperValu National Tidy Towns Contest 2021 has commenced with a slight drop in the number of participating communities, believed to be due to the impact of Covid-19 on the work of the groups in the respective locations.

Six Tidy Towns Committees within the area have coped with the challenges to continue their participation in the contest having continued the work and submitted their entries.

Birdhill, Newport, Toor, Killoscully, Ballinahinch and Shallee have all maintained their participation in the contest and continue to enhance their areas and compete for further gains on their scores.

There is no ‘on the ground’ adjudication for this year's contest, so the judges will not be making the usual visit to evaluate each entry. Instead points will be awarded on assessment of each of the entries made.

Just over 800 communities are participating in this year's contest, compared to 918 which participated in 2019, the last year that the contest was held. Close to 40 of the 2021 entries are from centres who have not entered for a few years, some back as far as the 1970s or '80s, while entries have been received from eleven centres new to the contest.

Adjudication is to continue to mid-September and the announcement of the results at a subsequent date to be confirmed.

There are two new categories in the 2021 competition:

(a) a new category specially aimed at young people to encourage a new generation to take pride in their locality and

(b) a special category for those groups who made particular efforts during Covid to try and ‘hold together their communities’.

To assist with the work under difficult circumstances of coping with Covid-19 restrictions, grant assistance of up to €1,000 has been presented to each of the 800 participating committees.

Community Development Minister Heather Humphreys noted that 2020 was the first time in more than six decades that the contest was not held.

“Tidy Towns volunteers are rightly proud of their locality – their efforts make towns and villages the length and breadth of the country better places to live and to visit.

“For years, Tidy Towns volunteers have shown great resilience and determination – even more so over the past year as our communities came together in the face of adversity,” she said.

However groups are understood to be finding some of the changes to the contest this year challenging.

In particular the Sustainable Development Goals that have been included to sections of the contest, which have been described as more relevant to a contest on social work within the community keeping the towns and villages tidy.

Some groups are also understood to have found complying with the technology based application form - used this year - a new challenge.