St Ann’s hospice has been named Winner of Winners at the British Chambers of Commerce’s annual Chamber Business Awards 2021, sponsored by the British Business Bank.

The event, now in its 17th year, is one of the showpieces of the business calendar, highlighting the role of business in delivering growth and prosperity for the UK and local communities.

The judges praised the commitment of St Ann’s Hospice in operating and solving urgent and immediate problems in an extremely challenging ‘market’ and wider environment.

The company, members of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, have introduced a successful telephone recruitment campaign, and worked to integrate lottery players with the fundraising and trading database to ensure cross-marketing, where appropriate and legally possible.

Sarah Howard, Chair of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said:

“If ever there was a worthy winner of this award, then St Ann’s Hospice is it. The difference its staff is making in people’s lives on a daily basis is already incredible. But the speed and inventiveness with which it then responded to its funding crisis following the impact of Covid-19 was truly phenomenal. In doing so it ensured its patients, their friends and families continued to receive the support they needed at a time of great uncertainty.”

Warren Ralls, Managing Director, UK Network, British Business Bank, said:

“With its origins in the middle of the last century, this year’s winner, St Ann’s Hospice, deployed the full range of innovative 21st century business practices to help both adapt and protect its operations during the pandemic. When face to face support and fundraising were severely impacted by Covid-19, St Ann’s ability to harness creativity and deploy new digital services, as well as fund-raising solutions, helped ensure thousands of people in Greater Manchester could still get the palliative support they needed. St Ann’s hospice demonstrated how a great business responds when faced with a series of major challenges in order to keep serving their local community.”