TTC Group motoring ahead with award win

Managing director Jenny Wynn hailed the Telford-based business's staff as she picked up the blue riband Business of the Year award, sponsored by Enterprise Flex-E-Rent, on a night of glamour and festivity at RAF Cosford.

It becomes the third business to join the rostrum of winners at the Excellence in Business Awards, which were held for the first time in 2014, following Telford-based Proto Labs and Newtown-based Quartix.

"We have a lot of ambition," Mrs Wynn said. "We have reorganised the team restructured the business, and stripped out costs while adding in quality.

"We have gone back to basics with one director, not two, driving the core business, and brought in a new commercial director to diversify."

Mrs Wynn said the company's recent track record had put it in a strong position to diversify, particularly with recent moves into the corporate sector.

Its core business works with police forces around the country to provide different driver training, including speed awareness courses which drivers can choose to attend as an alternative to having points put on their licence for speeding offences.

The company, which employs around 120 people as well as indirectly supporting 400 trainers, turned over £26.5 million last year.

"We have an outstanding team," Mrs Wynn said. "Last year we had 330,000 motorists on courses, and 25,000 cyclists. Of those 355,000 people, we have had 15 complaints, of which one was upheld.

"We delivered that volume of phone calls, and complete the process, and only had 15 complaints."

She added: "We do have an exceptional team, but we invest in them and have good staff benefit packages.

"We try to do things that are different from our competitors. For example we give all staff their birthdays off – it shows we value them. We reward them, rather than using the stick philosophy."

Quality manager David Finney, who submitted the initial application, said: "We have always known we are doing good work. We took the time to enter as we deserve recognition for the work we have done, and for the high performance of our staff."

Pipekit, at Annscroft, won the Micro Business of the Year Award, sponsored by the Shropshire Star, and managing director Martyn Rowlands said: "This means a tremendous amount to us.

"It's not just about the people that lead the business, but the people that work throughout it that made this happen for us. Shropshire as a rural county has many small and micro businesses, but they turn into medium sized and larger businesses."

Before TTC picked up the top prize for Business of the Year, the penultimate award, Small to Medium Sized Business of the Year, sponsored by Greenhous Group, went to Marches Care.

Managing director Mandy Thorn said: "This is down to all the staff, and they will be so excited. It would have been nice to bring all 141 of them, but we do have to think of the residents.

"Shropshire is all about impressive, innovative businesses, and we are small business central. I am really proud we are a smaller business, and really proud to be from Shropshire."