VOLUNTEERS behind the Prestwood Village Association hope the group will go from strength to strength after a successful first year.

It was standing room only as the group hosted its first ever AGM at the Village Hall on Tuesday to look back at its first year as a community group.

Chairman John Cadman said the PVA website now receives more than 1,000 unique users a month and the monthly newsletter has 626 subscribers – around a quarter of the village’s total population.

And he hopes in the group’s second year of existence that figure can be doubled so half the village keeps up to date with the latest from the PVA.

Mr Cadman said: “We believe we’ve been successful in going some way to meeting our objectives. Twenty five per cent of our village population is now receiving our regular newsletters. That’s one of the main drivers enabling their voices to be heard.

“It’s a popular source of local information. We as a community are very pleased with what we’ve done, and the feedback from the meeting has been positive.

“We are very keen to move that on to 50 per cent in the next year so more and more people are getting proactively involved in community matters.”