We all know the value of good neighbours – and our three finalists in the Neighbour of the Year category are certainly worth their weight in gold.

David Welton, 67, from Harraby, Carlisle, has worked as a milkman for 46 years and is retiring this year. Starting off as a milk boy at 13, he finished school and worked in agriculture from 17, before being asked when he was 22 if he wanted to head the milk round that he’d worked on as a youngster.

His rounds may have changed over nearly 46 years, but they’ve always been in Carlisle. David gets up at 1.30am to start, working all night and sleeping all day. Back when he began, he was getting up later because his milk round was more contained, whereas now it’s more spread over the city. When David started he would deliver about 800 pints a day.

He isn’t just a milkman, but a community stalwart, helping people home, making food for people during the floods of 2005, helping customers with their shopping and even taking a customer to the cemetery to pay respects to his loved one. David said: “You just do what you need to do.”

The second nominee is Paul Griffiths, 60, an electrical shift worker at Kimberly Clark in Barrow. A proud family man who always puts others first, once lockdown hit he realised the impact it was having, especially on the elderly and vulnerable, so he signed up to become an NHS responder to help his neighbours with basic tasks such as collecting shopping and prescriptions.

He asked The Mail to run a feature to promote it, which they did, then he decided to set up a local community Facebook group, Roosecote Community Hub, to provide a platform for his neighbours to connect and get any support they may need.

He started it just before Christmas 2020 and very quickly there were neighbours offering free Christmas lunches, shopping collections, dog walking, online yoga sessions and a lot more.

The group has grown quickly and now has around 1,700 members and Paul gets frequent messages from neighbours asking for help or advice. He uses his own money, without mentioning it to anyone, to buy things like warning signs for potholes or treats for litter pickers.

The final nominee is Julie Wedgwood, who helped set up a community hub to provide FareShare produce to people in Silloth. Julie works with the charitable organisation to set up food pantries right across Cumbria from Millom to Carlisle. To date, she has set up around 70, supporting community organisations to start up the pantries to be self-sustaining entities. She provides huge amounts of support with things like paperwork and co-ordination of the initial food deliveries and start-up duties.

The food pantries allow more people to have access to food as they are not means tested, with people coming on a ‘pay what you can afford’ basis, meaning everyone who visits has access to quality food no matter what their situation.