AT the Annual Parish Meeting held in Addingham on May 10 chairman of the Parish Council, Catherine Coates, presented awards to village residents in recognition of their outstanding contribution to village life.

Awards were presented to: Carol Hindle; John Bottomley; Jim Robinson; Wendy Palmer and Maureen Milbourne who was not present at the meeting.

Marilyn Jennings was presented with a bouquet of flowers from members of the Parish Council in recognition of the 'Silver Acorn' award presented to her by HM the Queen for her work in Scouting over the last 35 years.

Cllr Coates said in her annual report it had been a busy year for the village with the council continuing to work with all village groups, including the Civic Society and the library and the parish council taking on responsibility for the multi use games area from the Civic Society, in order to provide ongoing funding support for the valued community asset.

She said work on the Neighbourhood Plan, being developed by a group of councillors and village volunteers, was making good progress and the parish council was also continuing to support the Totally Locally campaign, most recently in supporting the successful Tour de Yorkshire event.

The report said the most significant event of the year had been the development of plans to refurbish the Old School. The captial project has been approved and work started but due to structural defects it has been closed while work continues on setting up a new renovation project.

Plans for the construction of a new toilet block and storage area outside the Football Pavilion, however, are proceeding more smoothly, and it was hoped that work would be starting on this project shortly.

Thanks were due to Richard Mulligan, the village Lengthsman, for his sterling work during the year, and also to all the councillors for their support on the council and for all their work on behalf of the village over the past year.