Red Rose Awards winners gather to celebrate Lancashire business

Lancashire business leaders gathered at Burnley Football Club to celebrate success, collaboration and new opportunities at the Red Rose Awards winners’ reception.

The event brought together winners, sponsors and supporters from this year's ceremony and offered the opportunity to network and champion Lancashire's thriving business community.

Richard Slater, publisher of Lancashire Business View, shared key highlights from the 2026 awards, noting that this year's finalists represented a combined turnover of more than £1.256bn, generated profits of more than £104m and employed more than 10,200.

He said: "We want to bring Lancashire business to the attention of other Lancashire business and also the wider world.

“We want to promote business excellence across the county and show the depth of our business offer.

“The Red Rose Awards offer the opportunity to meet customers, suppliers and collaborators and show how we can contribute to doing better business in Lancashire by introducing more people to each other.

“By taking part in the awards, it also gives you a chance to reflect on what you have achieved and we think self-reflection is good for business.”

The event began with a video recap of the March ceremony at Blackpool's Winter Gardens, produced by Big Tank Productions.

Burnley FC’s Melissa Harding talked about being a venue partner for the Red Rose Awards journey by hosting the judging days through to the winner’s reception.

She said: “It has been enlightening hosting events like this. It is great to see the innovative business across Lancashire and being able to speak to them and show the facilities we have. It is about networking with businesses across the county.”

Martin Emmott of Lancashire County Council’s business growth, finance and support programme Rosebud told the audience about the importance of collaboration and supporting the Red Rose Awards.

He said: “It is all about bringing people together and fortunately we have two clients who were winners and they have spoken to other winners in the room.

“Those conversations have led to working together and collaborating going forward.”

Winners including Tom Smith of Complete Online, Josh Morrison from JR Roofing, Lyndsay Fahey of Rainbow Hub and Andrew Brown of Barnfield Construction, shared insights into their businesses and opportunities they're seeking.

Tom talked about being ‘fifth year lucky’ entering the awards when they picked up the Creative Award.

He said: “I like the process as the whole team gets involved. It gives us a holistic view of the business and what we have done in the last 12 months and what we can do better.

“We have been able to improve throughout our community work with staff incentives and taking bits from what we have learned each year to improve as a business.”

Josh said he was overwhelmed by the response by the business community to their ‘Commitment to Skills’ win.

He said: “We have had a number of enquiries from people seeing us at the Red Rose. It has been 100mph since and it has opened doors for us.”

Lyndsay echoed Josh’s view about the rewards of winning the non-for-profit silverware.

She said: “I’ve just had a conversation about grant funding which might be able to give us £5,000 through their corporate funding scheme so it has brought opportunities for us.”

Andrew said winning the ‘Built Environment’ award was ‘validation of lots of hard work’ and ‘it is great for the staff who have become an Employee Owned Trust’.

“It is good for clients too as they can see the benchmark of who they are dealing with. With it being our  50th year in business, this is a memento of that,” he said.

Red Rose Awards winners in the audience were also given an opportunity to pitch their businesses to other organisations in the room

Joanne Hindley, sales director of Lancashire Business View, thanked supporters and sponsors for helping to make the 2026 awards a success.

Musical entertainment for the event was provided by the Ian Hooper Band.

The headline sponsors this year were Forbes Solicitors and Barclays, while category sponsors include: BAE Systems (Operations), Brabners, Brysdales, Chorley Borough Council, D&M Creative, Farleys Solicitors, Harrison Drury, High Court Enforcement Group, Napthens, Pierce, PM+M, Porsche Preston and Bolton, Rosebud, Sowena Group, TSS Infrastructure, University of Lancashire and Warden Construction.  Menzies were dinner sponsors, Skiddle were runway and after-party sponsors and Trident were energy partners.

The Red Rose Awards supporters and partners included RBC Brewin Dolphin, Bigtank, Burnley FC, Community Foundation for Lancashire, Marketing Lancashire, Merchandise4impact, Park Hall Hotel, PDS Engineering, Peter Scott Printers, RSM, Sales Geek Lancashire, Shout Connect, The Fun Experts, The Royal Dyche, Holiday Inn Blackpool and Viva.