Communities prepare to celebrate late MP Jo

CALDERDALE Council has been shortlisted for three prestigious national awards for its work following the Boxing Day floods and for its innovative approach to volunteering.

The council has been nominated in three different categories at the MJ Local Government Achievement Awards 2017 – for Senior Leadership Team, Delivering Better Outcomes and Behaviour Change.

Both the Senior Leadership Team and Delivering Better Outcomes award nominations relate to the devastating flooding that affected the borough in 2015.

The MJ judging panel praised the Council’s organisation and work to bring the community together after the floods.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on Thursday, June 15. MORE than 100,000 community events are expected to take place to mark the first anniversary of the murder of Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox.

Mother-of-two Mrs Cox was shot and stabbed by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair in Birstall days before the EU referendum last June.

Street parties, barbecues and coffee mornings will be held across the country as part of the Great Get Together between June 16-18.

Organisers have said they hope the celebrations will be the biggest since the street parties held to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, with the number of events registered on the Great Get Together website passing into six figures.

Widower Brendan Cox tweeted: “Over 100,000 £GreatGetTogethers planned and still a month to go.

“Amazing response and not too late to pull something together.”

Mrs Cox’s death, on June 16 last year, came just over a year after her maiden speech in the Commons, in which she said “we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”