Left to right: Professor Sir Steve Smith (Large Business), Karime Hassan (Community), Richard Marsh (event organiser), Tony Rowe (Small Business), Julian Tagg (Sport), Camilla Hampshire (Creative Arts & Media) and David Kirk (event founder and sponsor)

Exeter’s Power 50 Revealed

On Thursday 7 November Exeter’s first Power 50 list was revealed. Individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the city were celebrated at a prestigious event at the University of Exeter’s Forum building, hosted by Radio Exe’s Paul Nero and BBC reporter and presenter Alison Johns.

The Exeter Power 50 City’s Most Influential Award was presented via film to Michael Caines, the renowned chef, whose work has brought so much to Exeter and the surrounding area, supporting tourism, leisure, business, education and charity through his city centre hotel, restaurant and cafe bar, his training academy with Exeter College, the Exeter Festival of South West Food and Drink and his patronage of Families for Children and international cancer charity ‘One for the Boys’. Not only that but Michael now travels worldwide as a partner with the Formula One Williams team and Gidleigh Park has recently been named as the number one best restaurant in the Sunday Times Top 100 UK restaurants.

With five categories (Large and SME businesses, Community, Sports and Creative Arts & Media) the judging panel has had a difficult task to distinguish one individual at the top of each field from the Total Power 50. The winners of each category were Tony Rowe, Sandy Park (SME Business), Prof Sir Steve Smith, University of Exeter (Large Business), Karime Hassan, Exeter City Council (Community), Julian Tagg, Exeter City Football Club (Sports) and Camilla Hampshire, RAMM (Creative Arts & Media).

150 guests attended the event, where guests were entertained by the University’s acclaimed Jazz Orchestra. Guests were also welcomed to the evening with announcements by Radio 2 and voice of the Lottery, Alan Dedicoat.

Richard Marsh, organiser of the event said “We’re thrilled by the response to the Exeter Power 50 awards in our first year. With over 200 nominations, we had our work cut out for us but even then some people have been missed as they weren’t nominated. We’ll definitely come back bigger and even better next year.”

As sponsor and host of the Awards Reception, Event Exeter at the University of Exeter has embraced the Exeter Power 50. Sarah Snow, Head of Event Exeter said, “It was a fantastic evening where outstanding individuals who have made valuable and innovative contributions to the local community were celebrated. As a forward-thinking University, we were proud to support that innovation and to welcome everyone to the Forum, which provided a fitting backdrop for such a prestigious event.

Our congratulations go to the winners and to all who were nominated, for the excellent work they do in and around our city. We hope to see more local businesses making us of our fantastic facilities in the future.”