Award Categories

This award recognises start-ups and new businesses. Please describe your product or service, your founding story, and the ideas that drive your business. Explain how you deliver excellent customer service, highlight your growth, innovation, market strategies, and environmental initiatives. Share what sets you apart from other start-ups. Provide detailed information to help the judges understand your achievements.

This award recognises sole traders and small businesses established for over two years. If your business excels, share your story. Highlight your growth, innovative solutions, market strategies, sustainability efforts, employee retention, and support for your team. Provide annual turnover figures as evidence of progress. Explain what distinguishes you from competitors. Address these areas thoroughly to impress the judges.

This award recognises SMEs entering their next stage of growth. Please describe your customer service, growth achievements, innovative initiatives, market strategies, environmental practices, staff retention, and employee support. Explain what differentiates you from competitors. Include your number of employees and annual turnover to demonstrate growth. Provide detailed information to support your application.

This award is for the largest SMEs. Tell us how many employees, tell us about your customer service, your growth, your innovative ideas, your routes to market, your green credentials, your staff turnover, and your care for your employees. Tell us why you are better than your competitors. Please include the number of employees and demonstrate your annual turnover as proof of growth. Please outline the above and provide as much information as possible to impress the judges.

This award is made to individuals under the age of 28 who are involved in a business or are currently in training, including university, college, or work placement. This award is also open to young entrepreneurs who are building their own venture, employees who are in an apprenticeship, or those who have made an outstanding impact and contribution to their organisation. This award recognises an individual who has demonstrated exceptional dedication, innovation, or achievement within their field.

This award recognises exceptional hotels, holiday lets, guesthouses, tourist attractions, bars, restaurants, and eateries. Do you have 5* reviews on Google or TripAdvisor? What do staff and customers say about your business? How do you deliver outstanding customer service? Highlight what sets you apart, and include details, testimonials, and images to impress the judges.

This award is for any business that delivers excellent customer service. How do you look after your staff? Happy staff make happy customers, so how do you involve your staff in delivering world-class service? How do you measure and monitor your service? Do you have excellent CSI scores? What makes you different and better than the rest? Please outline all of the above and include testimonials and any images to support your entry and impress the judges.

Whether for websites, IT, apps, in-house systems, customer deliverables, inventions, sales, or advertising, there is an opportunity for exceptional use of technology in businesses of all sizes and across all sectors. Creative ideas and solutions are those that stand out from the crowd. We would like to hear how your organisation has used technology to outstanding benefit. What was the need for change, and how was this need identified? Describe the steps taken and the strategies that were rolled out. We want to hear how the business flourished as a result. Please outline as much information as possible to impress the judges.

How Innovative is your business? This category seeks to highlight organisations that have identified new and innovative ways of working, and/or created something that is unique to the marketplace. This may involve adapting an existing product for a new market or the introduction of something original and exciting. Entrants must be able to clearly demonstrate the demand for the innovation and that it has proved successful in line with the objectives set and has been available on the market for at least 2 years. Please outline as much information as possible to impress the judges. Professional Service: The winner of this award will have consistently delivered exceptional service to their clients.

The winner of this award will have consistently delivered exceptional service to their clients, demonstrating innovation and outstanding expert knowledge in their professional field, whilst continuing to exhibit excellence in conforming to relevant rules and regulations. Provide as much information as possible and identify what sets you apart from your competitors.

Tell us how you have hard-wired sustainability into your business. What have you done to reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment? How do you encourage your team to be greener? What makes you different from other companies? Please outline as much information as possible that sets you apart from the rest.

Is your business delivering high-quality health and well-being? Do you safeguard the mental health and well-being of your staff? Do you care about your staff and support your team through adversity, both at work and at home? Outline the care and support your business provides.

The chosen winner of this award will be able to demonstrate that they ensure their employees are at the heart of their business and are valued and supported in all aspects to improve performance. Evidence should be provided of your approach to people’s development, communication, and engagement. We will also accept nominations for this award for your favourite employer, provide as much information about them, and explain why they are the best. 

This is open to individuals, companies, nonprofit organisations, social enterprises, community projects/trust or community interest companies who have made and continue to make an outstanding contribution to their community. Detail as much information as possible that sets you apart from the rest.

The Outstanding Personal Achievement Award recognises individuals at any level who have made a meaningful, positive impact in their workplace, education setting, or wider community. Open to students, apprentices, academics and professionals from all fields, the award celebrates resilience, personal growth and inspiring contributions. Whether you’ve overcome adversity, delivered lasting benefits to others, or dedicated a lifetime to impactful work, we invite you to share your story, background and the difference your achievements have made.

This award is to recognise having the ability to extract the best from the areas you / they support at whatever level you / they work. We want to hear of mentors who have made a significant and positive contribution to a business / in their business by the exceptional advice and encouragement they give, as a result have subsequently flourished and gone on to achieve exceptionally in their career. What makes the mentor unique and why do they excel.

The winner of this category will be chosen from the category winners above. They will be the ‘Best of the Best’ They could be any size or from any sector, but they will demonstrate success through exceptional customer service, care for their staff and significant community engagement. This category cannot be entered and will be chosen from one of the overall category winners.