Absolutely fantastic news on the success of our Lloyds Bank Community Fund 2014 application

Our regular readers will know that Bolton MRT had been shortlisted for the Lloyds Bank Community Fund 2014 in the north-Bolton / Blackburn area.

By encouraging the public to vote, Bolton Mountain Rescue Team had a chance to be awarded a grant of up to £3,000.00 from Lloyds Bank to enable it to continue doing good work in the community.

The team was very kindly nominated for this award by Lloyds Bank employee Jane Crook, whom we rescued way back in August 1999, following a fall from her mountain bike in Lever Park, Rivington.

The Lloyds Bank Community Fund was set up to help local people across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man to have a positive impact at the heart of their community by giving grants to up to 1,400 local good causes in 350 communities.

There are four good causes shortlisted in each community and Lloyds Bank invited everyone to vote for the causes they’d most like to support.

As a result of Jane’s nomination along with nominations from others, the Lloyds Community Fund shortlisted ourselves and three other local charities within the Blackburn/Bolton community area.

Members of the public could vote for their preferred community group on-line, by SMS or Twitter, or in a branch of Lloyds bank up to yesterday evening, Friday 10th October 2014.

The local good cause that received most votes in each community would receive an award of £3,000.00 with the other groups receiving £2,000.00 £1,000.00 or £500.00 depending on the votes received.

We are now very pleased to announce that yesterday afternoon our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE received from Lloyds Bank the following fantastic news via an email;

“Dear Garry Rhodes – Bolton Mountain Rescue Team

Thank you for taking part in the 2014 Lloyds Bank Community Fund. We hope you have been able to use the opportunity to promote your organisation and increase your profile in the local community.

During the public vote, nearly 1.5 million votes were cast across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. We have now counted the votes cast in our Lloyds Bank branches and added these to the online, Twitter and SMS votes. We can now confirm the final voting results in Blackburn were as follows:

Total votes in Blackburn: 4825

Organisation Name	Rank in Blackburn	% of votes in Blackburn	Amount awarded
Residents of Sunnyhurst Association	1	40.5	£3,000
Bolton Mountain Rescue Team	2	22.9	£2,000
Blackburn Foodbank	3	20.3	£1,000
Turning Pages	4	16.3	£500

Next steps

Your award will be paid by cheque and will be sent by post, to the address you have previously supplied, within the next fifteen working days.

Separately, you’ll also receive a certificate by post to thank you for taking part. This will be with you by the end of November.

We will update the Lloyds Bank Community Fund website with the results for each community group shortly and we will also be announcing the results to the public through PR and social media. We may be in touch to ask you to share your story or you may be invited to take part in a local presentation – we would really appreciate your support.

At Lloyds Bank we aim to make a positive and lasting contribution to communities across the country. Thank you again for getting involved in the Community Fund and we wish you all the best for the future.

Kind regards,

Lloyds Bank Community Fund Team.”

This is obviously fantastic news for the team, and of course for the other charities which have greatly benefitted from the kind support of Lloyds Bank Community Fund.

We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank Lloyds Bank employee Jane Crook for nominating us in the first instance,

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our kind supporters who added their vote for Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.

We would also like to say a big thank you to colleague Mountain Rescue Teams, Search and Rescue Teams and a great many individuals who have regularly re-tweeted our updates on this vote.

Please also see website ‘News’ report dated Monday 29th September 2014, Monday 6th, Wednesday 8th and Saturday 11th October 2014.