Tidy Towns
Tidy Towns has become one of the largest environmental and social responsibility movements in Ireland.
Click to view more about our involvement.Their website hosts a huge amount of information and we highly recommend subscribing to their monthly newsletter.
Now with more alignment with both the National Pollinator Plan and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals we aspire to take better care of our community and our environment.
The 'Competition' element is a challenge to the nation to raise the bar, strive for the best, bring people together, make positive things happen, encourage best practices, share knowledge, develop ideas, and enhance all aspects of the community.
The competition results are useful since they reflect the views of 'outsiders' and 'visitors' who notice the things that we can become complacent about. We strive to remove the obvious litter and graffiti but we all have different views on what is 'Tidy'. The Judges' comments and scoring tell us how Johnstown compares to other towns. As the charts below show that despite our improvements we're still 'below average' in the County Meath entries and this is something we all should aspire to change.
2022/23 Entry Review
We've achieved a considerable amount during the year and have included our entry information as a useful recap of our work on several projects.
Detailed Adjudicator Reports
Each Summer the competition judges arrive unannounced to secretly review our entry submission. They award points from what they see using the 8 scoring categories explained in our Goals sections.
The published reports provide focus and help improve our Goals and Project plans.
Click icons to view the official published report.
42%
45%
47%
49.9%
45%
48%
Our Results To Date
Having only formed in 2016 we are relatively new to the competition and well behind in the score tables compared to those who started decades ago. We are catching up!
We are heading in the right direction with both our 2018 and 2021 entries awarded the Most Improved Group in County Meath.
8 Scoring Categories
The points scoring system increased by 80 points in 2022 raising the top score from 470 to to 550. The chart data has been adjusted to reflect this for all years
County Meath Comparison
It'll take a few decades to catch up with more established groups. The average score in the county is around 300 points.
Competition Enhancements
The National Biodiversity Plan is playing a greater role and is encouraging public planting that benefits wildlife. This means that some traditional practices are being discouraged such as maintaining traditional short-cut grass lawns, large annual bedding plant displays, tulips and daffodil beds, or planting hedging that offers little food or shelter. Providence of plants and materials is also important to ensure that Ireland's flora and fauna remain unique.
The United Nations Strategic Development Goals (STG's) were being introduced into the competition. These 17 goals ask communities to demonstrate how their projects and actions relate to these categories and how we are ensuring that future generations will have the same options.
This chart features in each project description and we will add statements to each to explain the connections.
A glimpse at our projects and how they relate to STG's.
The chart doesn't reflect the quality of the impact only the number of connections.
Our Goals & Objectives
Within 8 Categories we have many goals to enhance our neighbourhood.