THREE bids for grants from Haslemere Town Council have been successful.

Town Crier Christian Ashdown, Haslemere Hockey Club and Sport Haslemere pitched bids to the council’s grants committee in the latest round of awards.

Mr Ashdown applied successfully for £700 towards running a town criers’ competition to be held in the town centre during this year’s Haslemere Charter Fair on May 2. Haslemere Chamber of Commerce will also give £700. He told the committee the competition, to be hosted for the third time, is the only one held in Surrey and attracts town criers from across the country.

The last contest was held in Haslemere in 2014, also during the biennial Charter Fair – the council gave £300 towards running it while £748 was given by the chamber of commerce.

Councillor Libby Piper told the committee: “This town criers’ competition is great fun. I was fortunate enough to have a competition in my mayoral year and walking down the High Street in the middle of the town criers all ringing their bells was wonderful.”

Mr Ashdown was appointed as Haslemere’s Town Crier in 2010 by the council.

The position is unpaid and Mr Ashdown, a member of the Ancient and Honourable Guild of Town Criers, makes many public appearances at civic and charity events each year.

The grant will go towards running the contest including prizes and refreshments for the visiting criers, as well as hosting the competition website.

The town criers’ contest, held in Haslemere Museum grounds, is judged by four people on volume, diction, clarity and “best dressed”.

At the last event, Mr Ashdown, a former Household Cavalryman, played host to criers competing for the Tennyson Trophy, a bronze statuette of a 17th Lancer of the Light Brigade.

Sport Haslemere was also given £500 towards sponsoring an up-and-coming young local athlete under the Create A Star scheme, while Haslemere Hockey Club was awarded £750 for its schools’ coaching programme.

The Create A Star sponsorship helps youngsters with Olympic, Commonwealth Games or international potential cover their expenses. Sport Haslemere has budgeted for £4,000 to be paid in Create A Star grants for 2015/2016.

Chris Grimes, representing Sport Haslemere, which covers Haslemere, Grayswood, Hindhead and Grayshott, told the committee awards of £500 were made to individuals aged 12 to 18. This year the council was being asked to sponsor one athlete, who would be told the town council was their sponsor.

Haslemere Town Council had sponsored three different athletes over the past five years.

“We are hoping that as the years go on we will have an international athlete from Haslemere that we have supported,” Mr Grimes said, adding all the recent athletes were in the top ten in the country for their age group.

The scheme went out to all schools and clubs associated with Sport Haslemere and a number of applications go forward to a panel which considers awarding ten bursaries of £500 each. All applicants were potential international athletes, he said, included a tennis player who had taken part in the junior Wimbledon contest, and the sports they represented included cricket, running, hockey, sailing and pentathlon.

Also at the grants committee, Haslemere Hockey Club was awarded £750 for its schools’ programme, towards hockey coaching sessions for children in local state schools.

Representing the club, Peter Lawrence gave a presentation to the committee saying the schools’ hockey programme had helped around 580 children since it started in 2013.

“A lot of these kids had never picked up a hockey stick before or been involved in sport,” he said.

He said the schools’ programme gave children who had perhaps less opportunities a chance to take part in team sport, make new friends, keep healthy and have fun. The majority of the children played little organised sport in the school day.

Last season the club coached on average 280 children per week in three local primary schools during the school day.

The club has also done two multi-skills mornings at Woolmer Hill, coaching around 200 children each time.

Day time sessions are also a feeder for the After School Club at Woolmer Hill, with children going along on Friday evenings for more coaching sessions. There has also been a separate after school club at one of the primary schools with a further 25 children attending.

• Haslemere Town Council Grants Committee meets three times a year and its decisions are then ratified at full council meetings.

For more details on applying for a community grant, see www.haslemeretc.org or call the town hall on 01428 654305.