This is essentially an industry sponsored event that encourages town and parish councils to go that little bit further in making their community attractive. Although based on floral displays, the competition covers far more categories including general maintenance and community projects.
Once a year the judges arrive to inspect the labours of each community.
At least, that was true. Since Littlehampton was caught cheating in 2005, the judges now make several spot inspections before the big day.
Cheating It was discovered that teams of gardeners were waiting until the inspectors had viewed a particular display and moved on where upon the gardeners moved the display further up the inspection trail, so that it looked like there was more out than there actually was.
Funding Another strange fact is that all the villages and towns in the area carryout their projects paid for from their local budgets. So Rustington Parish Council fund the flowers and work in Rustington, Angmering Parish Council pays for Angmering, etc.
Littlehampton, however is funded by Arun District Council, which has considerable more welly than the others. It means that people in Rustington and the other towns and villages in Arun district, are paying for Littlehampton to compete against them! Cool.
I’m proud to live in Littlehampton.
