Axminster resident Cindy Furse has been awarded the Robin Cross Citizen of the Year Award, sponsored by Axminster Nub News.

Cindy has been volunteering in Axminster for years and is best known for her work with Light Up Axminster and Axminster Community Emergency Response (ACER), set up to help vulnerable residents during the coronavirus pandemic.

She was announced the winner of this year's Robin Cross Award at last week's virtual meeting of Axminster Town Council.

The award was launched in 2016 in memory of well-known community champion Robin Cross, who was site manager at Axe Valley Community College and spent more than a quarter of a century with the Special Constabulary, attaining the rank of special inspector.

This year, the £100 prize money was sponsored by Axminster Nub News and will be donated to a local cause of Cindy's choice, which has not yet been announced.

Announcing Cindy as the winner, the newly-elected Mayor of Axminster, Cllr Jill Farrow, said: "I am delighted to be able to award this to Cindy Furse in recognition of her services to Axminster over many years. Her most visible activity has been with Light Up Axminster; visible in so many ways - putting up the Christmas lights and the trees and ensuring that the town centre is vibrant even in these deeply dark times.

"Although we couldn't have them last year, the Cherry Fair and Axminster's Christmas Market, have been fundamentally beautiful celebrations of Axminster's heritage; the Cherry Fair in fact going back to Axminster being given the Market Charter in 1209.

"Now those things are hugely visible but what you may not see is that Cindy runs the initiative linking the statutory care services with the town's volunteering organisations and that function has been absolutely critical this year in being the backbone of the activities of ACER (Axminster Community Emergency Response), finding previously unidentified needs of some of Axminster's most vulnerable folk.

"In a year when may people have worked hard on behalf of the community it's highly fitting that Cindy Furse be singled out for the honour of the Robin Cross Citizen of the Year Award."

In response, Cindy first paid tribute to the late Mayor off Axminster, Anni Young, who died suddenly in December.

She said: "Anni played a really strong and important role and was a good friend to us, to me personally, and to Light Up Axminster.

"She always backed out work; we didn't always see eye to eye but it's always been with respect, encouragement and support that we worked together.

"Through the ACER work that we did I think we forged a lot of friendships and mutual respects that will be hard to replace."

Commenting on the award, she said: "I think what people like myself do should be done because its in our hearts not because we want the praise, so I find things like this quite strange. But Robin Cross was on our original group of people that decided to get together to reignite the Christmas lights in town, so it's quite a fitting tribute to Robin."

Cindy added that she had worked with "an array of important, wonderful volunteers", adding: "For me, they each share a little bit of this award because a lot of them have gone way above what anyone would normally commit to doing, especially this year.

"There are still some people doing weekly shops for vulnerable people in the town and they have been since the middle of March. There are some extraordinary people out there and some of us just get the joy of coordinating that when actually they do the hard work.

"So my hat goes off to everyone who does their little bit, that builds this wonderful tapestry of this town we have. Everyone plays their part in our wonderful little town and I think that's represented by the huge wealth of organisations, individuals, charities, groups, everything we have and we're extraordinarily lucky. It's nice to be just one little cog in those wheels."