Date draws closer for unveiling of region’s fastest growing firms

The Fastest 50 awards have been launched by the Yorkshire Post in association with top 100 UK law firm Ward Hadaway to highlight and champion the region’s high-achieving private sector companies.

The top 50 profit-making businesses with the largest annual growth in their turnover will appear in a special list to be published in the Yorkshire Post next month.

Awards will then be handed out to the fastest growing small, medium and large businesses at an awards ceremony next month.

One of these three winners will receive the accolade of being crowned Yorkshire’s fastest growing business.

Ward Hadaway, whose own Yorkshire operation in Leeds has been growing quickly since it opened in 2008, has been running a similar awards scheme for North East companies for the past 13 years from its Newcastle office.

Last year’s North East Fastest 50 Awards attracted heavyweight support in the form of Business Secretary Vince Cable MP who gave the keynote speech at the event. The awards were attended by more than 150 business leaders.

Martin Hulls, senior partner at Ward Hadaway in Leeds, said: “The North East Fastest 50 has become a real fixture in the business calendar and a must-attend event. We want the Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards to be just as successful and to show not just to the region but to the UK as a whole what fantastic businesses Yorkshire can boast and what a great place it is to do business.

“We are continuing to put together the list of companies in the Yorkshire Fastest 50 and the results so far have proved to make very interesting reading.”

Companies who make it into the Yorkshire Fastest 50 will have had to pass some challenging tests.

In compiling the list, economic researchers have analysed figures from a company’s previous three years of accounts and then produced an average annual growth figure for each busi- ness.

To be eligible, companies needed to be privately owned rather than plcs, to have an annual turnover of at least £1m and to have made a profit for each of the previous three years.

Businesses must also be locally owned or, for foreign-owned businesses, have local control. Companies were also selected for inclusion based on accounts sent to Companies House rather than by applying to be on the list.

Each company which makes it into the Yorkshire Fastest 50 will be invited to attend the Yorkshire Fastest 50 awards, which take place in March.

The event will be introduced by Yorkshire Post editor Peter Charlton and will also feature a special guest speaker.