Beacon shines on law couple at business awards
THIS year’s winners of the Hyndburn business awards have been revealed during a ceremony at Accrington Town Hall.
With nearly 190 people in attendance including businesses, sponsors and supporters the awards ceremony was the first major event at the town hall in Accrington since lockdown.
This year there were 589 nominations for the awards, which include Enterprising Person, Pride of Hyndburn and Small Business categories.
A special award was given in honour of the late Councillor Tony Dobson, who had been a keen supporter of local businesses and who sadly passed away last March after being a councillor in Barnfield for 21 years and a former Mayor.
The top award of the night was The Beacon Award which is presented to the most inspirational business.
It was won by NORI HR and Employment Law of Oswaldtwistle, which was only founded in 2019 by husband and wife pair Amrita and Jason Govindji-Bruce. At last year’s awards, the company was delighted to win the New Business title but because the event was virtual there were no trophies.
So Jason asked Alexis Valentine, from Walking on Glass who engraves the Beacon Award, to make one to celebrate the firm’s success.
Jason said: “Now we have a second trophy to go with last year’s.
“I knew we had done a lot, but we did not want to get big headed and didn’t think that we could have been in the running for the Beacon Award.
“We are all about supporting our clients and supporting our network associates and to be recognised locally is nice; it really is a massive shock.”
NORI, named after the famous Accrington brick, also won the B2B Business title, was highly commended in Small Business and a finalist in Customer Friendly and Workforce Development.
Rob Carder, from organisers Enterprising People, said: “We started Hyndburn Business Awards in 2016 to try to find a way to recognise and celebrate the achievements of our diverse business community.
“When we started doing this, we had no idea whether we could make this work, but it has and it has evolved and even coronavirus has not been able to stop us.”
Miranda Barker, chief executive of sponsor East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, said: “It is wonderful to see how the local economy is doing and we hope now that the members of the hospitality, tourism and leisure industries will recover as well.”
Carers Link Lancashire scooped the Large Business title, was a finalist in Not for Profit and chief executive Rebecca Hodgson personally won the Enterprising Person title.
She said: “We support unpaid carers across the whole of East Lancashire, more than 10,000 people.
“I have been with the charity for six years and started as a manager and worked up to chief executive.
“At the start we received 96 per cent of our funding from statutory bodies, not that is about 72 per cent and I am sourcing new funding streams.”
See more pictures from the night in next week’s Observer.