Royal reception for enterprise award winners
Winners of this year’s prestigious Queen’s Awards for Enterprise will celebrate their achievements alongside royalty and ministers.
Companies from across the UK will attend an event at Buckingham Palace this evening, hosted by the Queen, in recognition of their outstanding business success.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said:
It’s right that companies which are pushing forward, reinvesting and working hard to champion UK business here and abroad get this well deserved recognition.
I hope the awards and today’s celebrations will encourage even more businesses to enter next year and inspire more entrepreneurs to start or grow their own business. I applaud each and every one of today’s winners.
A total of 152 corporate Queen’s Awards were announced for outstanding business achievement - 116 exporting companies won awards for International Trade, 27 for Innovation and 9 for Sustainable Development, benefitting the environment, society and the economy.
Alongside the business winners, 8 individuals were awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion, having been nominated by their peers for outstanding voluntary efforts to support and encourage UK entrepreneurship. These exceptional individuals will attend a celebratory event, held in their honour and hosted by ministers, at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) this afternoon, 23 July. They will be presented with their Grants of Appointment and congratulated by the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, Business Minister, Michael Fallon and the 2013 Queen’s Awards business winners.
The standard of entries to the Awards this year was exceptionally high, with 25% of entrants winning across a range of sectors and size of business, the smallest having just 2 employees. In addition to the royal reception, the corporate Award winners are presented with an engraved crystal bowl and Grant of Appointment at their place of business by a royal representative, so that the whole workforce can join in the celebrations.
Many of this year’s winners are presenting their products to the public in South Yorkshire as part of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise showcase. The display includes wholesale beauty products from I Love Cosmetics Ltd and domestic heating systems from Ideal Boilers Ltd. The showcase will be on display from Monday 15 July until Wednesday 31 July at the BIS offices, St Paul’s Place, Sheffield.
Nominations for the 2014 Awards are now open. To enter, go to www.queensawards.org.uk.
Notes to editors
1.A full press book of winners, including descriptions of all 152 business Award winners and 8 recipients of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise Promotion (QAEP) is available.
2.The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s most prestigious awards for business success. There are 4 categories of Queen’s Awards – 3 for business success (International Trade, Innovation and Sustainable Development) and 1 for individual achievement in encouraging UK entrepreneurship (the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion). Companies apply for the Business Awards, but individuals must be nominated for the QAEP.
3.In a survey of the 2011 Queen’s Awards winners:
- 83% of winners said it brought prestige to their business
- 48% of winners said it gave them an edge overseas
- 79% of winners reported improved staff morale
- 63% of winners gained extra press coverage
4.Biographies of the 8 recipients of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise Promotion (QAEP)
Mr Rajeeb Dey
CEO & Founder
Enternships
Rajeeb Dey has been involved with enterprise promotion for over 9 years as a leader and role model for young entrepreneurs. He is a Trustee of UnLtd, The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, who awarded Rajeeb a grant aged 17 to set up his first social enterprise, Student Voice, which works to empower school students. He is also co-founder of Startup Britain, a national campaign to promote entrepreneurship. Rajeeb has established Enternships.com, an organisation that connects students and graduates to entrepreneurial work placements within small businesses, through which he has worked with over 4,000 businesses and over 30,000 university students, many of whom have subsequently set up their own ventures through exposure to these entrepreneurial internships. Rajeeb has also undertaken other voluntary roles including Trustee of the Phoenix Education Trust, the Channel 4 Education Advisory Board and the UKTI Global Entrepreneurs Programme.
Mr Richard Gallafent
Senior Partner
Gallafents LLP
Richard Gallafent is a professional patent attorney. However, for the last 14 years, he has also devoted a large amount of time to providing voluntary assistance in intellectual property (IP), design, licensing, marketing and investment to a wide range of innovators and inventors, helping them to commercialise their ideas. He co-founded the group ‘ideas21’ in 2000 and, through this organisation and the related ‘Second Tuesday Club’, has offered free IP advice to small businesses and inventors while also mentoring and training students studying intellectual property. He has devoted a great deal of his time voluntarily to promoting intellectual property, working in partnership with the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO).
Lady Cunningham
Enterprise Development Coach
Ways into Successful Enterprise
Allerdale Borough Council
Lady Cunningham is employed as an Enterprise Development Coach on a project called Ways Into Successful Enterprise (WISE) that works in West Cumbria. The area suffers extensively from rural and social deprivation, with high levels of worklessness and child poverty. She has been involved in activities that support and mentor disadvantaged individuals and groups to set up or continue in business, to enter employment and/or to become self-employed and she has worked with, and mentored on a one-to-one basis, over 300 other potential start-ups. She has promoted enterprise by conceiving and co-ordinating high profile events celebrating the successful new business start-ups across West Cumbria. Anne also works with Young Enterprise and organises events with colleges and schools.
Mr Michael Herd
Executive Director
The Sussex Innovation Centre
Mike Herd is the Executive Director of the Sussex Innovation Centre (SInC) a business incubation company attached to the University of Sussex. Mike has worked for over 15 years to create and run SInC as a self-sustaining business which now works to support University spin-out companies and other local organisations with advice, support and seed funding to help to build businesses. Mike has also extended the range of the centre to cover the local county. Through this organisation he has nurtured over 230 businesses and now there are currently 60 high tech, high growth companies in residence, with an additional 40 receiving guidance and support as virtual members. His enterprise promotion activities extend more widely with his involvement as a board member of UK Business Incubation Ltd (UKBI).
Mr Ian Smith
Vice Principal
Surbiton High School for Girls
Ian Smith is Vice Principal at Surbiton High School and has been a successful teacher of business and enterprise for 20 years, whilst carrying out a range of voluntary activities for Young Enterprise (YE) and other organisations. He has been an exceptional volunteer ambassador and a Link Teacher for YE for over 20 years in different schools, Chair of YE Regional Board and YE Trustee in Berkshire and Surrey. Ian has supported over 600 Year 12 pupils across nearly 50 YE companies and has initiated projects with Entrepreneurs in Action, 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Business and From Classroom to Boardroom. Through his work he has encouraged the creation of social entrepreneurship projects called Akenkan and Morsbags in collaborations with Free the Children UK.
Mr John Vernon
Business Advisor
Oxfordshire Business Enterprises
John Vernon has earned a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion for his work in supporting new and small businesses. John has been active in mentoring and assisting pre-start and start-up businesses for the last 14 years and has contributed to the breadth and depth of his extensive previous management experience to younger and growing enterprises. He has been a voluntary advisor with Oxfordshire Business Enterprises (OBE) for 8 years during which time he has worked with some 500 clients, mainly start-ups, but also some more mature SME businesses. In addition to his advisory role, John has also become substantially involved in the management of OBE, joining the board of directors as Advisor Representative to the Board. He spends up to 3 days per week on this activity, provided on a voluntary basis.
Professor Elizabeth Towns-Andrews
Director of Research and Enterprise
University of Huddersfield
Professor Elizabeth Towns-Andrews has been the Director of Research and Enterprise at the University of Huddersfield for 3 years during which time she has established an enterprise infrastructure which is internationally recognised as an exemplar for higher education business engagement. The facilities include a dedicated enterprise service and business start-up unit for students and staff. The University of Huddersfield has been voted Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2012 (Times Higher Education Awards, Nov 2012). Her activities also extend to heading up a £2.7 million European Regional Development Fund Graduate Entrepreneurship Project (GEP) and the establishment of the £12 million 3M Buckley Innovation Centre that provides accommodation for 100 businesses. Elizabeth also holds a number of voluntary posts including Kirklees Economy and Skills Board and Deputy Chair of Yorkshire Universities’ Knowledge Transfer Directors Group.
Ms Claire Dove MBE, DL (Lifetime Achievement Award)
Chief Executive
Blackburne House Group
Claire Dove earns the Lifetime Achievement Award for Enterprise Promotion following a long history in running and promoting social enterprise both locally in Liverpool, regionally and nationally as chair of Social Enterprise UK. Claire was awarded an MBE in 1993 for her work in setting up the Women’s Technology and Training Centre, an education facility in Liverpool to help single mothers and those from the black community to develop their potential. Since then she has developed the training centre into the social enterprise Blackburne House, which she has grown into one of the most successful women’s support organisations and social enterprises in the UK. From its inception with 30 training places it now provides over 1,000 places annually and employs 70 staff plus a number of volunteers. Blackburne House is rated ‘excellent’ by OFSTED and also achieved Beacon status.
5.The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set 4 ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’, published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.