Our successes – awards and national recognition

Our successes

From awards to national recognition, our colleagues, services, and projects showcase our dedication to making a real difference:

2025 successes

Social workers nominated for national awards: Social workers are being recognised nationally for their outstanding contributions to children’s services and complex care, having been shortlisted for honours at 2 awards ceremonies. At the Social Worker of the Year Awards, Sarah Malivoire has been nominated in the Practice Leadership and Management category, while our young carers team has been nominated as Team of the Year.

Princess Royal Training award: Our Social Work and Social Care Workforce Development team has been recognised in the 2025 Princess Royal Training Awards, presented by HRH The Princess Royal and the City and Guilds Foundation.

Innovation in Building Diversity and Inclusion: Recognised by the MJ Awards for driving inclusive music education in Central Bedfordshire.

Ofsted has rated our children’s home in Biggleswade as ‘Good’, recognising the dedication of our team and the safe, supportive environment we provide to help young people thrive.

 

2024 successes

Comms2Point0 winner: Our marketing team recently won at the Comms2Point0 UnAwards for their Everything OK? campaign, in the Supporting Health and Wellbeing in Communications category.

Success for Council at the National Children and Young People Awards: Staff from Central Bedfordshire Council have been recognised at the National Children and Young People’s Awards, which were held in Birmingham at the end of October. 

Integrated Front Door team finalists at national awards: Our Integrated Front Door (IFD) team has been shortlisted as a finalist for the Partnership Working Award at the National Children and Young People Awards.

‘Trainer of the Year’ at the Nursery World Awards 2024: Helen Field, Workforce Development Manager for Children’s Services in our Learning and Development department, received the award in recognition of the support and training she has given to early years practitioners across Bedfordshire for the past 27 years.

Employment and skills service rated ‘good’ by Ofsted: Our employment and skills academy has been rated ‘good’ by Ofsted after an inspection in July. Ofsted inspected the Bedfordshire Employment and Skills Academy (BESA) over 4 days, and the service was rated ‘good’ in 6 categories resulting in an overall ‘good’ rating. Inspectors looked at: the quality of the education provided, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, adult learning programmes and apprenticeships.

Three social workers from Central Bedfordshire Council have been shortlisted for an award at the Social Worker of the Year Awards. Chloe-Ann Turner and Holly Shreeves have both been named as finalists in the Newly Qualified Children’s Social Worker of the Year category, and Elizabeth Badu has been named as a finalist in the Newly Qualified Adult Social Worker of the Year 2024 category.

Geoplace Awards: Our Asset Intelligence Team has won another annual Platinum Award for its maintenance and improvement of street data. The integrity of street data is essential to utility companies, Emergency Services, and the Local Authority. 

One of our social workers has received national recognition of her outstanding contribution to the social work profession. Rebekah Pocock, who is newly qualified and in her first year with us, has been recognised in the Amazing Social Workers campaign, championing the exceptional work happening across the UK social work profession. It is run by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), the UK’s largest professional body for social work.

Staff from our children’s centres have won an award at the Youth Sport Trust awards. The children’s centres won the award for their work to deliver the Healthy Movers programme, which aims to increase physical activity among children, across Central Bedfordshire. They were the winner in the Outstanding Early Years Physical Literacy Practice category at the awards held in Telford at the end of March.

2023 successes

Central Bedfordshire Council is a finalist in the Planning Authority of the Year category of the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence 2023. The RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence national winners’ ceremony is a high point of the planning profession’s calendar, with the awards taking place on 21 November 2023.

The Council’s Planning Academy (now known as The Place Academy) has won Best innovation in smart working in the LGC Workforce Awards.

The Council’s Planning Academy (now known as The Place Academy) won the MJ category for Workforce Optimisation. The Planning Academy was created in 2018 to overcome recruitment difficulties and reliance on temporary staffing. There was a need for an innovative approach to optimise the workforce and grow its own talent. Since 2018, 29 trainees have been employed via the academy's training programme covering planning, building control, flood risk, natural environment, highways and conservation.

Our Strategic Growth Team won the Planning Authority of the Year category at the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) East of England Planning Excellence Awards ceremony. The team was recognised for showing great resilience and adapting to unexpected challenges, adopting the Local Plan after a difficult Examination and committing to a challenging work programme. The judges also highlighted our commitment to equality, diversity, inclusivity and tackling inequalities, which was evident in the implementation of Equalities Impact Assessments for all planning policy documents.

Our Adult Social Care team’s ground-breaking use of technology to improve patient safety and care to deliver better outcomes for vulnerable people was Highly Commended at the LGC Awards and a finalist in the Digital Transformation category at the MJ awards. The technology is in use in our step-up, step-down reablement units and three care homes for people across Central Bedfordshire.   

Central Bedfordshire Council received Bronze Award Status from the Carbon Literacy Trust recognising the Council’s commitment to increasing the knowledge and understanding of the challenges of climate change through training. Over 130 Council employees and Members have so far taken the training.

2022 successes

Comms2.0 shortlisted the marketing team at the Council for Best Small Team in 2022.

Double winner at Social Worker of the Year awards 2022: On Friday 4 November 2022, Kirstie Baughan, who works for Central Bedfordshire Council’s Children’s Services team was crowned a winner not once, but twice at a national awards ceremony. Kirstie won the Social Justice Advocate Gold Award and Overall Social Worker of the Year 2022.

LGC Awards shortlisted our Breaking the Stigma media campaign tackling misconceptions of homelessness and encourage residents worried about homelessness or experiencing homelessness to seek help as early as possible to prevent homelessness and avoid crisis intervention.

Central Bedfordshire Council, Bedford Borough Council, Luton Council and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) won the ‘Partnership of the year’ award at the Modeshift convention for ensuring safe, sustainable journeys to school.

At the Social Worker awards, our Young Carers Service won the National Children and Young People Award. The Early Help Service were highly commended in the Safeguarding of Children Award and a further four people were shortlisted for awards.

give me an seo title and description for this web page