Raising the Bar Awards 2025

The great and good came together to celebrate the social impact that Yorkshire’s business community create at West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce’s annual Raising the Bar Awards.  

Raising the Bar celebrates all the hard work businesses put into supporting the wider community and measuring their social impact in their local area. These awards give businesses of all sizes recognition in three key areas: Environment, Education and Community.  These in turn are further broken down to celebrate small, medium and large employers in these areas. 

In the Environment Award there were wins for the Rotary Club in Bradford (small), Sandburn Hall (medium) and Askham Bryan College (large).

The Education Award saw victory for RJJ Software (small) and Asda (large). 

Finally, the Community Award saw honours for fonemedia (small) ACS Group (medium) and EQUANS (large).  

Donna Morris, the Chamber’s head of events and marketing, said: “The nature of these awards is not just about the accolade; it’s about giving recognition to all those businesses who strive to improve the places where we live and the lives of people that reside here. 

“As a Chamber of Commerce, we see first-hand the incredible work our members do for their local community and people, often actions which are totally behind the scenes.  

“Tonight is all about giving these people their due recognition as proud local businesses.” 

The award ceremony was held at the offices of online giant Flutter and presented by former BBC presenter Andrew Edwards.  

Our sponsors this year were Vanquis Bank as headline sponsor with further backing from power giant Drax and Flutter.