This is news to me, so it might be to others here. Bridport Arts Centre have set up a new prize for first novels. Details here:

http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/content/first-novel-award

Can't seem to paste the actual link, sorry.
Edited by tatterdemalion at 16:15:00 on 11 February 2014

Ooh, worth knowing about - thanks, Tatterdemalion. Bridport's other prizes are so well-respected: this should be well worth having a shot at.

This is  and I am 

Please note this award is open only to those resident in the UK

So, all is well. The Romanian, Albanian, Bulgarian etc migrants who speak 10 words of English can enter. (Not that I have anything against them.)

I have no choice but to pass.
 

Oh, that's always so frustrating. It may simply be to restrict the number of subs to something manageable, I suppose. Either that, or because prizegiving ceremonies and publicity are a notoriously damp squib if the winners can't/won't turn up. But still jolly annoying.

As a Londoner, I'm routinely frustrated by prizes aimed at other regions. There aren't many aimed at us, and I remember more one where they said, exactly, "For writers from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the English Regions."

I felt like taking them to the European Court of Human Rights, for discrimination. The only people who couldn't enter were, basically, Londoners.