I was delighted to represent the Friends of Maghull & District (FOMD) as one of four  community invitees including Keith & June Sefton (the amazing RAFA charity), Cllr Ross Ferguson (Maghull Mayor) and Cllr Chloe Parker (MTC leader), for an inspection (2.2.26) to enable Maghull’s Air Training Cadets (ATC 2348 Squadron) to reach the next round of the prestigious Lees national competition trophy which they nearly won recently.

It was a great opportunity to thank and highlight their incredibly community focussed support which is always undertaken with warmth, good humour, hard work, politeness and organisational skills. They have magnificently helped FOMD over the years (pictured) with:

  • 2023 maintaining and repairing thousands of trees FOMD planted at the MTC Old Hall Park.
  • 2023 they crucially moved mountains of donated woodchip from Paul Richards alongside FOMD and the Hudson primary school children around thousands of our previously planted young trees to hydrate and suppress weeds.
  • 2024 raked countless embedded forms of harmful debris from the lower section of Rowlands Dell.
  • 2025 helped maintain thousands of hedge trees by removing competitive weeds during the all-day BBC filming, partook in some interviews, when we surprisingly discovered FOMD with the support of our amazing community had actually won the national 2025 BBC/RHS Growing Together Garden Competition.

They have been involved in so much other community charity work involving council hampers, weeding St Andrews Church overgrown graveyards, collected for the local Rotary Christmas and countless other work. All of which has been recognised in other awards and perhaps most recently by Olivia Byrne (Cadet Warrant Officer) who won the 2025 MTC Matthew Locke Youth Award for multiple outstanding inspirational community voluntary work and achievements (see attached nomination).

On behalf of FOMD and the wider community we would like to offer our heartfelt best wishes for the national competition and express our immense gratitude to everyone in this kind and inspirational Squadron.

We have tried to capture all their kind support listed above in the photos and I even had the opportunity on the inspection night to organise and take a picture of Squadron leader Ian Taylor with his superior who was undertaking the inspection, a cadet, and asked Ross and Chloe to join in whilst June, Keith and myself hid in the ‘wings’ (no pun intended!).

Fingers crossed to one and all for your deserved recognition,

More Information about the Maghull ATC: https://www.facebook.com/2348MaghullATC

 

Dr Frank Sharp

FOMD.

Together Making Maghull a better place to live.

More information about this and other projects at: www.fomd.co.uk

Contact: admin@fomd.co.uk

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