Applications open for Small Awards 2025 (United Kingdom)

The Small Award, launched in 2017, targets the whole small business sector focusing on businesses often overlooked by other awards. With 5.8 million small businesses in the UK, there are huge numbers of small businesses doing great things that may not be recognised by awards due to geography, scale or even awareness of the benefits such awards can bring. The Small Awards will change that by reaching out to a massive small business base that its management team have built up over many years working in the sector.

The Small Awards take place on May 22nd, 2025 and will be a great event with small businesses, experts and luminaries coming together for a fantastic evening of awards and networking.

All finalists will be invited to The Small Awards ceremony, a black-tie dinner, to hear all the Award winners announced live.

Award Categories

• High Street Hero – Best high street business
  • This award is looking for a strong high street business that has a proven record of contributing towards the success of their street. The business will be an active member of their community and work to drive footfall to their business and neighbouring businesses. The award will recognize both long-standing businesses and younger businesses that are doing something exceptional with their premises.
• Bricks and Clicks Award – Best multi-channel small business
  • This award celebrates small businesses that use multiple channels with innovation and skill to develop their business. Channels can include office or store, website, social media, mobile or trading platforms. The award is looking for businesses that demonstrate a flair for getting the most out of these channels. The judges will recognize in particular businesses that use their channels to work with and promote other small businesses.
• Legacy Award – Best family business
  • This award recognises the unique characteristics, challenges and strengths of family run small businesses. The business will demonstrate involvement and contribution from family members as well as demonstrating business success over a period of time. The award is looking to celebrate unique stories from businesses that have worked as a team to achieve great things.
• Supply Chain Champion – Best B2B business
  • This award recognises small businesses that are working within the business supply chain. Businesses will work with other businesses large and small, with particular credit to those businesses that include other small businesses in their supply chain. The award will recognise financial success in these businesses, as well as a strong history of customer engagement, relationship development and contribution to local small business eco-system.
• New Kid On The Block – Best business start-up (less than 18 months)
  • This award is for businesses that have started less than 18 months ago (from December 2023) and have demonstrated in that time considerable progress to grow and develop. The business will show progress in one or more of the following areas: product or service development, customer engagement or acquisition, marketing and sales process, cost or process management, team development. The award is looking for inspiring new businesses that will be seen as role models for other new businesses.
• Digital Star – Best digital only business
  • This award recognises small businesses that operate only through digital channels. The business will not have a storefront, but use the internet to market, sell, and promote their product or service. The award will celebrate strong use of digital channels to engage customers, innovation in web design and functionality, and growth in audience over time. The business will demonstrate strong understanding of digital engagement and show how they have used this understanding to deliver for their customers.
• Heart Of Gold – The business that contributes most to their community
  • This award recognises the small businesses that contribute a bit extra to their local community. The business will work with their community, other small businesses, local charities, schools, local councils or their local residents to achieve great things. The community can be defined geographically or by sector across the UK. This award is up for interpretation by the small businesses – the award will look for evidence of a heart of gold.
• At Your Service – Best small service business
  • This award will celebrate the best small service businesses in the UK. The business will demonstrate a strong record of serving their target customer set. This can include B2B, such as communications or media, and direct to consumer businesses, such as restaurants, bars and hairdressers. The award will look for exceptional levels of service demonstrated with evidence of strong customer engagement.
• Sole to Sole
  • This award is specifically for sole traders and celebrates the tenacity and drive it takes to go it alone. The winning sole trader will demonstrate considerable progression, a sense of contributing to their community and a sense of purpose for their future. They will demonstrate excellence in all areas of the business, being excellent multi-taskers as all sole traders are.
• Mission Possible
  • This award will be given to the business that is driven by its mission over and above financial performance. This mission will benefit a group, a community or society more widely. This award is ideally suited to CICs, not for profits and charities, but is open to all businesses that set out and deliver on a demonstrable mission. The winning business will articulate its mission both internally and externally, and will show evidence of progress towards delivering on that mission.
• Net Hero Award
  • For the third year running, their ‘Net Hero’ award recognises small companies that demonstrate exceptional commitment to environmental sustainability. Launched in the run-up to the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), this award celebrates innovative, trailblazing and eco-friendly small businesses that have climate action, commitment to “Net Zero”, sustainable development and supply chains, and environmentally-friendly products and processes at the heart of their business.
• Small Business Of The Year Award
  • This overall award will recognise the best of the best. The winner will be selected from the shortlisted entries from the other categories. This business will show evidence of excellence in many areas of the business, to include: revenue growth, sales and marketing, product or service innovation, organisational behaviour and structure, staff management and development, cost management, stock and supply chain management, use of digital channels, social responsibility and supporting other small businesses.

Benefits

• The Small Awards offers multiple media opportunities for all short listed small businesses in the run up to and post Awards.
• Media outreach will be undertaken to regional and vertical media for all shortlisted businesses, as well as for the eventual winners, and case study-led feature pieces will be pitched into national broadsheet, SME and other business press. This will include print, web and radio coverage across the UK.

Judging Criteria

• Judging will be done based on a number of criteria relevant to the specific award, whilst also looking for strong performance as an on-going business. The judges will be looking for evidences of strong community engagement from small businesses. Judging will be completed by the end of April, 2025.

For more information, visit The Small Awards.