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These awards are declared at festivals etc. but often there is little or no explanation of how the award is given. I hope the following explanation of what happens year by year helps to make this clear:

Stage 1 - Getting started: During October and November of 2006 all active members of the branch were asked to nominate their Pub of the Year. Nominations take the form of one member, one vote. Nominations were counted and all nominated pubs went forward to Stage 2.

Stage 2 - Branch winner: Working individually, branch members who volunteer as judges survey the nominated pubs, using the standard POTY form. From this stage onwards the standard POTY form is use throughout. Each pub is surveyed by a minimum of three judges (more if more volunteers are available). This stage completed in January 2007 and when the survey forms were completed and the votes counted it was revealed that the Blue Raddle was the winner. In February 2007 during Dorchester Beerex, the result was officially announced and the Blue Raddle became our branch POTY for 2007.

Stage 3 - Wessex regional winner: Our POTY along with all the other Wessex region CAMRA branch POTY’s go forward. This time the judges are made up from a group consisting of members selected from all Wessex branches. Judges visit several pubs, but are not allowed to survey the pub in their own area. All pubs have to be surveyed by August and the results of the Regional POTY’s are announced at the same time as the Good Beer Guide is issued in September. The Digby Tap in Sherborne was award this accolade in September 2006 and we wait to see how the Blue Raddle will fare in this years contest.

Stage 4 - The Super Regional and CAMRA POTY: The sixteen CAMRA regions are divided into 4 super regions, Wessex along with South and Mid-Wales, South West and Central Southern makes up our super region. This time the judges are the Regional Directors and members from CAMRA HQ. Again the pubs are judged using the standard GBG forms, but the winners are not revealed. The winners of the 4 Super Regional finals go forward to the final stage. The 4 pubs are surveyed by Regional Directors and staff from HQ. From this survey we get one overall winner and 3 runners up. The winner and runners up for 2006 were announced during Community Pubs week in February 2007.

So for a pub to win the national award it must go through an ever rising set of hurdles over a period of some 15 months, and before that there must also be a tremendous amount of work put in by the landlord/landlady. I hope that makes things a bit more clear ...

Dave Harris, Webmaster

(Thanks to our colleagues in Exeter & East Devon Branch for developing this explanation)