The award, an ongoing tribute to Jeremy Allen, was presented by Graeme Cushion from Poppleston Allen.

Speaking about the award, Graeme reminded everyone that the award is intended to recognise excellence in licensing. He paid tribute to all those nominated, pointing out that nomination alone is a tribute to the individuals, illustrating the regard in which they are held by their peers.

Of those nominated, the 3 finalists included:

• David Etheridge, Worcestershire Regulatory Services (formerly Tewkesbury Borough Council)\r\n
• Rita Jones, Merseyside Police
• Inspector Andrew Mason, and PC John Alcock (joint nomination), Suffolk Police

David had been nominated by former colleagues at Tewkesbury Borough Council and he paid tribute to them and to his regional IoL colleagues for their support to him in his role over the years.

David spent just over six years at Tewkesbury Borough Council was noted for his hands on approach to his licensing role, always seeking to develop good working relationships with applicants and taking a mediation approach to resolve issues avoiding formal action where possible.

He was responsible for redesigning the Council’s licensing webpages, the content of which was fully overhauled and updated to be more customer focused and to encourage more 'self-service' to make life easier and simpler for applicants, whilst also helping the Council deal with increasing pressures on its resources.

Linked to this was a project David led to create e-forms so that customers could access the information they needed and make their applications online. Again this was with the aim of cutting down the number of basic enquiries that officers had to deal with, freeing them up to work on other areas of the service that were a priority.