A councillor from Chalfont St Giles says ‘heartache’ at not being able to enter this year’s Best Kept Village awards has been exacerbated by ‘slow progress’ on opening a playground, duck pond and river walk that were shut in the spring after being turned into an ‘open sewer’.

The village, which has won the Best Kept Village’s Pushman Cup – for rural populations over 3,000 – six times since 2002, pulled out of this year’s competition in July, five months after Thames Water apologised for a category one sewage incident at its River Misbourne depot on Amersham Road.

It was revealed today that the 2024 Pushman Cup has been claimed by Burnham, with Haddenham in the second-place spot, spelling “heartache” for Chalfont St Giles residents who worked hard throughout the spring and early summer to be in with a shot of retaining their title.

Cllr Robert Gill said he saw local groups “out doing litter picks and making decorations to hang up around the village” in the run-up to the “difficult decision” to withdraw, but also lamented the lost opportunity to highlight his home’s strong community ethos, whether through its local groups or packed events calendar.

He was also hoping to be in with a shot of the coveted Tindall Cup, where title-holding winners take each other on – a category Chalfont St Peter won’t be eligible for in 2025.

Instead, the village, which has a population of roughly 4,000, has made headlines over the last few months as ‘Britain’s smelliest’, thanks to the large-scale sewage leaks which a council spokesperson said had effectively turned it into an “open sewer”.

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The wide-scale attention has helped spur Thames Water and Buckinghamshire Council to take relatively swift action in clearing accumulated fungus from the river, Cllr Gill said, but progress has been slow on lifting cordons from parts of the village still shut off after being deluged with untreated waste months ago. 

“The Best Kept Village title isn’t a huge thing in itself, but we’re a small village and it does give us a little tourism boost and help to bring in more visitors. It’s good press – and being the 'smelliest' doesn’t have quite the same ring. It’s not the sort of thing you want to be famous for, but we don’t have a choice.

“Even though we’re past the worst of it and the sewage pumping has stopped, it's a waiting game for proper testing to be done by the Environment Agency. We need confirmation that it's safe for people before we can reopen the playground and other areas that are still off-access."

He also described the decision to pull out of the Best Kept Village contest as “something we thought long and hard about”, but which, coupled with a handful of other events including an Enchanted Village treasure hunt, simply weren't feasible when looked at “in the cold light of day”.

The parish council may have faced significant setbacks in the last six months, but they’re remarkably undeterred, especially now that there’s a light at the other end of the tunnel.

Cllr Gill said plans are already underway for a downscaled version of the village’s annual show in September – now a street party with local vendor stalls and children’s activities. He’s hoping it will be a “way to celebrate things getting better”, a collective sigh of relief from the community, if you will. 

It’s also never too soon to be eyeing up the 2025 Best Kept Village contest – “It’s nice, in a way, for the title to be passed around. We’ll definitely be back next year, stronger than ever.”