COMMUNITY members in Tavistock showed their kindness recently, when an article in the Times about bird boxes being vandalised at Tavistock Primary School, prompted them to donate new boxes.

The school received new bird boxes from three different sources.

Rod Burnett, development manager at PLUSS which provides training for disabled people for the work place, read about the vandalism in the school's environmental area and visited the school recently to donate bird boxes, bat boxes and dormouse boxes to replace them.

The Lions Club also donated three new bird boxes after reading the article.

Jessica Inacio, a year five pupil at the school also wanted to help and after making a bird box at her Brownie group, she decided to donate it to the school.

Deputy head teacher Laura Handel said: 'We were very upset after the vandalism but we are delighted that because of the article in the Times, we had phone calls from Rod Burnett and the Lions.

'It is lovely to see how people in the community have rallied round for us — the children are really pleased.

'We have more boxes now than we had before we will put some on our school field as well as our environmental area.'

Laura said the school did not want to have to lock its gates to the public to prevent vandalism happening again: 'We don't want to make the school a no-go area for people, it's a nice open space and we don't mind if kids want to come in and use it at the weekends, but we just want everyone to respect the grounds.'

Tavistock Primary School's caretaker Barry Crook is now busy finding suitable places to put the new boxes.