VILLAGE OF THE YEAR - GRCC CATCHING UP WITH PAINSWICK

• Peter Richardson

Catching up with Painswick, our Gloucestershire Village of the Year 2025 Winner

How has winning the title, and prize money, affected the village?

As the February launch date of our 2026 Gloucestershire Village of the Year competition gets closer, we've been to Painswick to ask parish councillors and other locals about the impact that their Village of the Year win - and £7000 in prize money - has had on their community.

As well as receiving the £2000 Overall Winner prize, Painswick also won two further Category Winner prizes of £2000 each, and a £1000 Category Runner-up prize!

Parish Council Chair Adrian Gyde and Parish Councillor Fiona Mackenzie-Jenkin, both pictured above, and Parish Clerk Roy Balgobin, told us that the prize funds were contributing to numerous village projects.

Painswick's £2000 Climate and Environment prize had been given to the Painswick Beacon Conservation Group, which has recently bought a small herd of cattle to graze the Beacon. The £2000 Inclusive Community Prize would be contributing to sensory play equipment and accessible walking maps, and the Community-led Health and Wellbeing category runner-up prize of £1000 was funding "pay-as-you-can" village suppers.

"We asked in the Painswick Beacon magazine for suggestions on how to spend our Overall Winner prize money," said Adrian. "The most frequent suggestion was more flowers around the village, so we're working on plans for this with two councillors from Stonehouse who've had great success in Britain in Bloom, and with the Painswick Gardening Club."

"We're hoping that the Gardening Club will be able to look after the maintenance of the plants, and the Parish Council will look after the regular watering."

If any village thinks they might like to enter the competition, they should just give it a go, and not worry about being "ready" or "perfect" say the Painswick team: "We'd really encourage other villages to enter the competition next year, as even on our working group, several people felt that our village wasn't yet ready to enter, but we did it anyway as a learning opportunity to find ways to improve."

Parish Clerk Roy Balgobin added "Although we were the winners last year, we're not complacent, we're always looking for ways to improve the village. We're not sitting on our laurels."

"For example, we do really need more digital support in the village," said Parish Councillor Fiona Mackenzie-Jenkin. She urged other villages to enter the competition: "The entry form is a really useful blueprint for how a village should be, because the competition isn't about how pretty the place is, it's about everything that a community needs, to be a supportive and inclusive place to live."