Tara's delight at BEM nomination in King's Birthday Honours

A Sunderland mum has spoken of her delight after being named in the King's Birthday honours list for her community work.

Tara Mackings, who is living with cerebral, palsy, has been awarded a British Empire Medal for services to the community in Tyne and Wear, particularly during the Covid pandemic.

Tara, 41, from Whitburn, started at disability advice service Bliss=Ability as a volunteer receptionist in August 2016.

She developed non-for-profit service Tailored Leisure (TLC) in 2019, which sadly like many other businesses had to be postponed due to the pandemic.

She used the downtime to develop and enhance the firm's offering by consulting disabled people to shape and enhance its services.

Her idea for ‘Sit to be fit at home’ led to an online interactive programme that enabled individuals to access sessions online.

Since lockdown was lifted, Tallored Leisure has grown into a large-scale community engagement project, offering an array of fitness support.

To date, Tara has enrolled 300 clients and plans to extend this further to include programmes specific for children and young people aged between 12 and 16.

The community-based and virtual fitness programmes run alongside a continued funding drive to raise £1.5 million for the development of an innovative, one-of-a- kind accessible short break holiday and leisure complex, the ‘Butterfly of the North'.

The first stage came to fruition in 2022 when TLC collaborated with leading family holiday company Haven to launch their first accessible short break service for families at Berwick and contacted the National Lottery, who funded the programme with a £125,000 donation for the next two years.to employ professional instructors, video making and a website.

She admitted she had initially thought her nomination for the award was a joke: "I am utterly overwhelmed by the whole thing - I really did not expect it," she said.

"I thought it was a wind-up and said so on the phone to the lady at the House of Commons.

"I am just immensely honoured to be nominated for the work that I have done."