Open to businesses with up to 10 employees. Judges will make their decision based on dedication, commitment, proven success and imagination. Financial results will be considered (when given) but will be a secondary factor to those mentioned.

Open to businesses with 11-50 employees. The Judges will make their decision based on dedication, commitment, proven success and imagination. Financial results will be considered ( when given) but will be a secondary factor to those mentioned.

Open to businesses with over 50 employees. We would like to know what makes your business successful, what makes it stand out from the crowd and what it offers that its competitors do not.

We are looking for a dynamic person who is dedicated and committed to the apprenticeship scheme.

The employer of the year should be considerate of their staffs welfare, reward loyalty and promote a safe and relaxed working atmosphere.

Judges will look at how technology has benefited your business or how the technological advances you have implemented benefit the wider reaches.

Judges will look for an outstanding City Centre business.

Show us how what you do impacts on the area, how commercially successful you are and how innovative you have been.

Open to sole trader businesses

Open to businesses under 2 years old. The Judges will make their decision based on business success and growth. At the same time the judges will be taking into account a range of factors including how the business was taken from concept to reality. Financial results will be considered ( when given) but will be a secondary factor to those mentioned above.

We would like to see how successful your plan was and how it was a positive promotion for the area.

This award is to show us how you’ve implemented green measures into the organisation and tell us how these measures have benefited you and the local community.

We would like to award this to a business that has a clear sense of its ‘social mission’: which means it will know what difference it is trying to make, who it aims to help, and how it plans to do it. It will bring in most or all of its income through selling goods or services. And it will also have clear rules about what it does with its profits, reinvesting these to further the ‘social mission’.

The judges will be looking for an individual or an organisation that have made significant contributions to enhance the skill levels of their own or another business.

The Judges will make their decision based on the success of the company in breaking into export markets or in growing their products/services internationally. Any financial information provided will be treated in confidence.

Open business women

The judges will make their decision based on the services provided by the entrant along with their innovation, proven track record, value for money and standards of service. This category is open to bars, restaurants, hotel industries along with applicants from the leisure centres, sports complexes etc.

Open to individuals that have had an impact on the local business community throughout their lifetime.