THE winners of this year’s Pride of Swindon Awards have found lasting recognition of their achievements in the town’s Central Library.

The Mayor Swindon Andrew Bennett proudly unveiled a plaque in the library on Wednesday afternoon, containing the names of each of this year’s award winners.

The 16 individuals and six teams who were selected by a panel of judges received their awards at a special presentation event held at STEAM last month. But yesterday their names joined the ranks of the seven previous years’ winners in the library.

Before Mr Bennett unveiled the plaque, member of the judging panel, Shirley Ludford praised the efforts of each of the winners to make Swindon a better place, and read each of the winners’ names out personally.

She said: “This is now the awards eighth year, and I think it is very effective because of its simplicity and all of those who won an award this year will be seeing their names up on the list this year.

“The winners of this year’s Pride of Swindon Awards are Marie West for her work with repeat offenders; Ailsa Palmer who is retiring after 23 years as parish administrator of Christ Church; Gina Musty for her work with Dorcan Performing Arts Group; Phoebe Maddison for her fundraising work for diabetes; Ricardo DeFazio – an inspirational fitness instructor who sadly can’t be with us today as he is currently on a bicycle heading to Barcelona on another charity event; Ken Stronach of G5 Martial Arts for his work with PAT dog Big Merv with older people; Josie Williams of Commonweal School for her work with community arts; Michelle Howard for work with numerous volunteer organisations; Penni Seviour who also works with many charities; Sue Lee for her outreach work with sex workers in the town; Jo and John McCue of Broadgreen Lunch Club; Michael Blunsdon who has volunteered with Prospect Hospice and the Great Western Hospital; a posthumous award to former councillor Frank Richards; Helen Steward who has raised money for CALM after her daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumour and firefighters’ chaplain John Maxwell.

“The team winners were BIOS Youth Club Project, Swindon Phoenix Rotary Club, Swindon Down's Syndrome Group, Swindon Mela, Big Breakfast + and the Youth Offending Team volunteers. A pretty impressive list.”

Mr Bennett urged people to start thinking now about who they could nominate for next year’s awards. He said: “These awards give us the chance to recognise those people who are not necessarily at the forefront but without whom we couldn’t be without.”