Join sack race and tidy town

A TIMED litter pick to clean up Henley’s streets will take place next month.

The Great Henley Sack Race will be on Sunday, April 6, and will involve residents coming together to collect as many bags of litter as possible in under two hours.

The event is timed to coincide with Keep Britain Tidy’s “Great British Spring Clean” and has been organised by Henley Town Council.

The council says that the aim of the race is to tidy the streets so that “to the casual observer, there is no visible litter in the public realm.”

Its target for the event is to collect between 200 and 300 bags of litter as well as recruit at least 100 volunteer litter-pickers.

The initiative has been set up as a revival of the Hit Litter campaign which was run as part of Henley in Bloom in previous years, with the last event being in 2019.

The council say it’s hoped the event will have representation from a wide range of organisations and businesses in the town and promote civic pride.

The litter pick will run from 2pm to 4pm with volunteers meeting at the town hall for registration and collecting litter pickers, hi-vis vests, gloves and bin bags from noon.

At the end of the race, volunteers will reconvene at the town hall where refreshments will be provided.

Town clerk Sheridan Jacklin-Edward told a meeting of Henley in Bloom on Thursday last week that preparations for the event was well underway.

He said: “I’m trying to email around to all local groups to try and get teams along as well as individuals.

“We’ve had quite a few sign-ups already which is really positive.”

Mr Jacklin-Edward said that some of the groups that had already signed up included the Scouts, air, army and sea cadets, climate action group Greener Henley, as well as a number of churches and schools.