How Our Awards Work

Our awards are about celebrating the people, businesses and organisations making a real difference in our community.
We also want the community to play a big part in deciding who gets recognised, which is why nominations are at the heart of the awards.

Nominations

When nominations open, we want you to get involved! Nominate the people, businesses, organisations or groups you think deserve recognition and tell us who you’re nominating and, most importantly, why. Some categories may receive a lot of nominations, which is exactly what we’re hoping for. Get your friends, family, colleagues, customers and wider community involved and help us shine a light on the people you think deserve to be recognised.

How the Finalists Are Chosen

Once nominations close, we’ll check all nominations to make sure they are valid and meet the requirements of the relevant category. A valid nomination must be genuine, submitted during the nomination period, made for an eligible nominee and include a meaningful reason. A nomination that simply says “because they’re amazing” without explaining why may not be counted. We’ll also remove nominations that are clearly spam, duplicate nominations from the same person or attempts to unfairly influence the process. Once these checks are complete, the six nominees with the highest number of valid nominations will become the finalists. This means the community has a real say in who makes it through to the final six, while ensuring that the nominations being counted are genuine and meet the requirements of the awards.

Two Ways to Win

Once the six finalists have been announced, there will be two separate ways to win each category.

Public Choice
The six finalists will go to a public vote, giving the community the chance to choose who they think should win. This is your opportunity to support your favourite finalist and show them how much their community values what they do. The finalist who receives the most public votes will be awarded the Public Choice Award for that category.

Judges’ Choice
Our category sponsors will collectively form the judging panel. Sponsors will be allocated into small judging panels for each category, with each panel considering the six finalists and selecting the winner of that category.

Sponsors must declare any conflicts of interest with finalists and will not be permitted to judge a category where they have a conflict of interest.

The judging panels will review the reasons given for each finalist’s nomination and select the person, business, organisation or group they believe is most deserving of the Judges’ Choice Award.

The decision will be based on the strength and substance of the nomination, including the examples and reasons provided for why the finalist deserves recognition. It will not be based on the number of nominations received or the finalist’s popularity.

Why Two Winners?

Because both things matter!

One finalist might have a huge amount of support from the community, while another may have made a significant impact that fewer people know about.
Public Choice gives the community its say, while Judges’ Choice gives the judging panel its say. Sometimes, the same finalist may win both awards, and that’s absolutely fine. There isn’t a “better” award. They’re simply two different ways of recognising the people doing brilliant things across our community.
Ultimately, the awards are about celebrating the good happening across the Fylde Coast and giving the people who make a difference the recognition they deserve.