BRADFORD’S neighbour of the year thought her nomination was a hoax and has passionately urged people to stop pulling up daffodils and throwing them.

Siobhan Dowling won the Good Neighbour of the Year Award (sponsored by Incommunities) at the Community Stars Awards last Wednesday.

There were 1,079 votes made in the category in total, with Mrs Dowling receiving 586 of those.

The other finalists were David Rhodes and Peter Walker.

Mrs Dowling cares about community cohesion, regularly checks on those living next to her, cleans the street and works with the most vulnerable in a local supported living scheme.

She is a "a true example of what a neighbour should be", according to her daughter.

Mrs Dowling said on receiving her award: “I think I’m a bit in shock, I’m jittery, I’m shaking, I’m speechless.

“I’m truly delighted to have won this award and grateful my daughter put me up for it.

“I did think it was a hoax to begin with and I came in from cleaning one day and I was so tired and I got this text and I sent it to my daughter and I said, ‘somebody’s hacked into my phone, can you sort this out?’

“She said, ‘mum, it was me.’

“But I think she’s recognising the hardwork, we just want to make this place, Bradford, a nicer place for us all to live in.

“It’s nice, it’s celebrating Bradford for all the good that it does and I’m just proud to be a part of that.”

The very person who nominated Mrs Dowling - her daughter - was unable to attend the ceremony, because she was sprinkling her own magic on the Bradford community.

She was fostering two children for the first time that evening.

Mrs Dowling said: “We were just brought up like that. I know when my dad used to cut the hedges when we were young, we had to clean everything up and clean half a mile in case a leaf had gone somewhere, into somebody else’s garden, so whether that’s been instilled, you keep your front clean and tidy, but you help your neighbours out.

“And what a beautiful time to be neighbour as well, especially with what’s going on in Ukraine, it’s important to be a good neighbour.

“So maybe it is all instilled, and with my daughter fostering now as well, again it’s neighbouring as well, it’s helping out, if we can’t do that, what can we do, why are we here?”

Bradford’s top neighbour’s message to the rest of the city and world is simply to be kind, but she also has a specific bugbear.

She said: “Do you know what really, really I would like people to stop doing? People have taken a long time to plant daffodil bulbs.

“For what they represent, and when people just pull them up and throw them away, that is something that I feel passionate about, that is terrible.

“It shouldn’t happen, that is a life at the end of the day, what the daffodil represents, really needs to have a little bit more thought into it as well - so the mentality of people as well.

“I know we talk about education as well. I’ve been through years and years and years of listening to speeches of ‘education, education, education’.

“I’m not too sure if the word is getting through or not, we might just need to try a different approach.

“But please people just be kind to each other and thoughtful.”