A village hall in Pannal, Harrogate, has been shortlisted for a prestigious national award at the 2012 Biffa Awards, a ceremony which recognises the people who transform their communities through Biffa Award funded projects.
Selected from nearly 100 hopeful applicants, Pannal Memorial Institute will now compete against four other organisations from across the country for the chance to be named winner of the ‘Community Buildings’ category, and receive a £2,000 prize.
The enthusiastic community group received £50,000 in funding from Biffa Award to extend and refurbish a former caretaker’s house attached to the village hall to create two new community rooms along with extra storage space and toilets.
The Biffa Awards 2012 will be held on September 27 at the Historic Dockyard Chatham, Kent, where all the finalists will be invited to attend a day of celebrating the enthusiasm and commitment of those who dedicate their lives to making a real difference to their community and the environment.
Competition has been fierce from the start, with more than 200 projects eligible to enter the awards under five different categories: Community Buildings, Cultural Facilities, Rebuilding Biodiversity, Recreation and Small Grants.
Category winners at the Awards will receive a trophy and prize money of £2,000, which can be used to further develop their project. Each winner then has the chance of being crowned the Overall Winner for 2012, receiving a further £1,000 prize.
Gillian French, Biffa Award Programme Manager, said:
The Biffa Awards are a unique opportunity to reward and recognise the dedicated people who are delivering some of the excellent projects we have funded. A great deal of the projects we support have a huge and lasting impact on their local community and environment, so to be short-listed for an award is a tremendous achievement in itself. Our judges have a difficult but exciting task ahead in choosing the winners.
