Celebrating its 2025 Local Retail Champions at an awards evening at the Hilton London Syon Park on Thursday 20^th November, Allwyn announced 16 regional winners as well as two national winners.

The Golden Plough in Ballymoney was named one of the 16 regional winners, with the local grocery store and filling station receiving a £5000 prize.

The regional awards recognise retailers and their stores for their outstanding contributions to their local communities. They were nominated by customers for a variety of reasons, including holding fundraising events, prioritising store accessibility, providing home deliveries for the elderly, hosting community events and much more.

Allwyn’s Director of Commercial Partnerships and Retail Sales, Alison Acquaye-Acford extended her congratulations to all of this year’s Local Retail Champions.

“This initiative from Allwyn’s Social Value Fund shines a spotlight on the incredible role National Lottery retailers play in their communities up and down the UK,” said Alison.

“These winners embody the values that make local shops so vital to local areas. We’re proud to celebrate their achievements, as well as the National Lottery Good Causes they support by selling tickets.”

The Golden Plough was the only Northern Irish store to be named a regional winner, with stores from across Scotland, Wales and England rounding out the 16 regional winners.

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London Hilton Syon Park has been named as the venue for this year’s evening awards ceremony, which will take place on Thursday 20^th November.

Local Retail Champions 2025 is once again recognising National Lottery retailers who go that extra mile to support their local high streets and communities. The main awards nomination period opened in early September for the national and regional award categories and has already amassed almost 1,100 customer nominations.

And retailer-submitted entries for the new Innovation Award have now opened. This category will celebrate the impact of local National Lottery Good Causes and the significant role National Lottery retailers play in raising money for these Good Causes by selling tickets.

All retailers have to do to enter is visit www.TNLPartners.co.uk and share suggestions on how to bring local National Lottery Good Causes to life in their store. The two retailers with the best ideas will each win £2,500 cash, and up to £2,500 to implement their idea.

Some examples of ideas about how to bring Good Causes to life include:

• A retailer having a community mural painted on the side of their shop to highlight local Good Causes in their area.
• Hosting a street party celebrating the local community and local Good Causes.
• Installing a neon sign in store that tells customers how much they’ve helped raise for Good Causes by buying National Lottery tickets at the store.

Whatever the idea, big or small, retailers are welcome to submit their own entries for the award.

Allwyn has also added a new function to TNL Partners Hub which allows National Lottery retailers to view a page which lets them see how much they’ve raised for Good Causes so far this year. This gives them real-time information on the positive impact they’re having on National Lottery-funded projects up and down the UK.

Allwyn’s Director of Commercial Partnerships and Retail Sales, Alison Acquaye-Acford said: “By introducing the new Innovation Award category this year, we’re celebrating local Good Causes and their impact on communities up and down the UK, while also recognising just how important National Lottery retailers are in generating the funding that powers these projects. They sell the tickets to players and, by doing so, help to raise around £30m every week for Good Cause projects.

“Whether it’s a youth centre, a conservation project, a community theatre or anything else that sends out ripples of positivity into the local area, we’re looking forward to seeing some of the wonderful ideas from National Lottery retailers about how best to highlight these projects in their stores – and then celebrating the two winning entries at the special awards evening in November.”

Local Retail Champions is being enabled by using part of Allwyn’s dedicated Social Value Fund, which is £1m that the company has committed to investing annually to help communities and high streets across the UK and Isle of Man to thrive.

The post Allwyn reveals further details of new ‘Innovation Award’ category first appeared on Neighbourhood Retailer.

The nominations period for the two national and 16 regional awards will run from Monday 8^th September until midnight on 19^th October.

A successful inaugural Local Retail Champions 2024 saw Raj and Manish Suchak, and Natalie and Martin Lightfoot – owners of Coldean Convenience in Brighton and Londis Solo Convenience Store in Glasgow respectively – crowned the two national award-winners. This was ahead of 16 regional winners who also picked up awards.

The 18 winners fended off competition from almost 1,000 other National Lottery retailers from across the UK, who had all been nominated by their customers for going above and beyond for their communities.

Allwyn is once again partnering with Reach plc – the UK’s largest commercial news publisher – to promote the Local Retail Champions campaign across consumer-facing national and regional publications and websites. It will also be supported through special in-store posters, which are new for this year and are due to land at retailers from 8^th September.

Also new for this year is a special Innovation Award category that will reward two National Lottery retailers for their ideas about how they would celebrate National Lottery Good Causes in their store. Self-entry for this award category will open later this month, with more details revealed in the coming weeks.

Prizes available: 

• Two national winners will each take home a £15k cash prize (customer nomination)
• 16 regional winners will each win a £5k cash prize (customer nomination)
• Two Innovation Award winners will win £2.5k cash plus up to £2.5k to bring their idea to life in store (retailer self-entry)

There are a host of reasons why retailers could get their customers nominating them for one of the national and regional prizes, anything that positively impacts the local community could be a reason for a nomination.

Allwyn’s Director of Commercial Partnerships and Retail Sales, Alison Acquaye-Acford said: “Local Retail Champions is back and we’re excited to once again be celebrating National Lottery retailers making a massive difference in their communities.

“As we saw from last year’s almost-1,000 store nominations, retailers right around the UK are doing incredible things to support their communities every single day. We want to find even more great stories again this year and reward retailers for their dedication and goodwill.

“As an organisation that is committed to positively contributing to society in how we go about our business, and with retailers helping to raise £30m every week for National Lottery Good Causes by selling tickets to players, it’s really important to us that we recognise and celebrate the incredible impact local retailers have on the places we live, work and visit.”

The initiative is being enabled by using part of Allwyn’s dedicated Social Value Fund, which is £1m that the company has committed to investing annually to help communities and high streets across the UK and Isle of Man to thrive.

To nominate a local retailer, a customer must be 18 or over and should write up to 150 words before 19^th October on how their local National Lottery retailer has made the community a better place. To find out more about the campaign or to nominate a National Lottery retailer, please visit www.TNLLocalRetailChampions.co.uk

More information about how to enter the Innovation Awards competition, and further details about the award category, will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The post Allwyn’s Local Retail Champions returns for 2025 first appeared on Neighbourhood Retailer.

With total prizes worth £140,000 up for grabs, ‘Local Retail Champions’ will recognise and reward over 100 community-minded National Lottery retailers across the UK and the Isle of Man.

This could include those who deliver to customers unable to reach the shop or who have widened their aisles to accommodate wheelchair users. Or retailers who support or sponsor local sports clubs, who focus on stocking locally produced products or who organise local litter-picking sessions.

The prizes available are: 

• Two winning local retail champions will scoop a cash prize of £5,000* and will also receive a social value store makeover worth £20,000. The makeover will help the shop do more for its customers, community or environment. For example, it could fund energy efficient fixtures, pay for lessons for staff who want to use sign language, or refurbish space designed for community use.
• Sixteen other regional winners will win £5,000* each.
• A further 100 runners-up will receive a £100 cash prize.

Working with Reach plc, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher, ‘Local Retail Champions’ will be promoted across a wide range of consumer-facing national and regional publications and websites, and the competition will be supported on National Lottery retailers’ in-store media screens.

‘HEART AND SOUL’

Retailers can also spread the word about the competition face-to-face with their customers and encourage their shoppers to vote for them via their store social media channels by directing them to the campaign website, with Allwyn providing guidance to retailers on this.

The initiative is being paid for with money from Allwyn’s dedicated Social Value Fund, which is an annual £1 million that the company has committed to using to support operating The National Lottery in an environmentally and socially responsible way. This year, Allwyn is using a portion of the fund to reward and recognise the important role its retail partners play in every community across the UK and Isle of Man.

National Lottery operator Allwyn’s CEO Andria Vidler said: “Retailers are the heart and soul of their communities. By selling tickets, we have more than 40,000 National Lottery retail partners helping us to raise an average of over £30 million each week for National Lottery-funded projects. But they also support their local areas in many other ways.

“That’s why we are delighted to launch the Local Retail Champions campaign, through Allwyn’s Social Value Fund, which will recognise those National Lottery retailers who go that extra mile to give back to their communities. We can’t wait to see all the fantastic stories and urge every one of our retail partners to share details of the campaign with their customers and get involved – as there are some brilliant prizes up for grabs!”

To nominate a local retailer, a customer must be 18 or over and should write up to 150 words before 20^th October on how their local National Lottery retailer has made the community a better place. To find out more about the campaign or to nominate a National Lottery retailer, please visit www.TNLLocalRetailChampions.co.uk.

*Or cash equivalent to their local charity partner Ts and Cs apply. For full terms, please visit see the www.TNLLocalRetailChampions.co.uk  

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