A town’s creative idea to promote local businesses and get people out and about has proved ‘phenomenal’.

Beaminster Town Council has partnered with Businesses of Beaminster (BOB) and other groups to form a restart campaign to continue the amazing efforts of the town’s resilience team during lockdown with support and helping residents.

The result is a scarecrow competition and treasure hunt, which has proved a resounding success so far.

Craig Monks, chairman of Beaminster Town Council said: “When Covid kicked in and lockdown happened, our resilience team did a fantastic job with getting support for the community but I wanted it to be more of a reaction to something and make something a bit positive from it and that’s where the restart came from.

“As a council we wanted to find something that we could make our own and put our hat on so to speak.

“It’s been great, we’ve worked alongside the local businesses and put scarecrows up around the town, which then formed a treasure hunt. It’s all been designed to encourage visitors and local communities to get back out and about. The treasure hunt takes you to all the parts of the town we would like you to see.”

Scarecrows have been dotted around the town and they have a letter which then makes up a word needed to enter the competition, however, there are a few decoy scarecrows to make it a bit more difficult.

“It has been phenomenal,” Mr Monks added. “We had people queuing up and having to social distance at scarecrows to get the letters.

“I bumped into a guy who was not from the area who had seen it on social media and decided to bring his kids down to do the treasure hunt.”

The scarecrow competition was held in The Square on Saturday, with live music, refreshments from local businesses and West Dorset MP Chris Loder spending his birthday as the guest judge.

The winner won £100 and all prizes relate were given in voucher form to spend at local businesses.

Mr Monks said: “This is alongside the other elements that we are doing - sprucing up the town, getting bunting up and just having a positive spin on things, obviously with the Government’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme which has proven to be good for us. We’re just trying to say to people, ‘come and visit, come and see what we’re doing’.