The Hampshire team presenting their winning paper

Hampshire
triumph in
Local Authority
of the Year
final

Hampshire County Council is the Young Local Authority of the Year 2008. The team of Andrew Boutflower and Emma Gordon won the prestigious title for their local authority at the national final in Bournemouth with a paper on the theme of tolerance.
     The runners-up were East Sussex County Council Team 2 represented by Darren Elliott and Polly Reynolds. Their achievement is all the more remarkable because they stepped into the event at the last minute, having been nominated as first reserve, when one of the teams which had qualified automatically had to pull out. East Sussex's paper, appropriately enough, was on success.
     Third place, and highly commended, were Hetty Thornton and Amy Wilson, representing one of the smallest local authorities in the competition, Fenland District Council. The London Borough of Haringey (Lucy Cranshaw and Becky Cribb), occupied fourth place and were commended.
     The chief adjudicator, Michael Cockerell, said in his summing-up that the standard of all 12 teams was extremely high and that comparatively little separated them.
     Each of the teams researched, wrote and presented a 900-word paper exploring the meaning and significance of a word allotted to them. The finalists qualified for Bournemouth from a series of five category competitions which attracted a total of 56 entries from local authorities all over the country.
     Emma Gordon is a scrutiny officer with Hampshire County Council, while her team-mate Andrew Boutflower is an accounting manager. For East Sussex, Darren Elliott is a performance improvement officer while Polly Reynolds works in training and development.

[For adjudicators' remarks from the final click here]

[To read the winning paper click here]

Darren Elliott and Polly Reynolds of East Sussex County Council