The Epsom & Ewell Business Awards: yes, you can nominate your own business
The awards are free, you can nominate your own business, and since 2025 only businesses inside the borough are eligible, which leaves out Ashtead, Nork and Tadworth. What changed when the council took them on, and how to make a win count for longer than the evening.
You can nominate your own business for the Epsom & Ewell Business Awards, and it costs nothing. The awards site invites you "to nominate a business, including your own", and neither it nor the council's page for the 2025 awards mentions a fee. What changed in 2025 is where you have to be.
Inside the borough, and three categories at most
The awards were founded by Lord Grayling in 2011. After he decided in 2024 not to stand again as MP for Epsom and Ewell, Epsom & Ewell Borough Council took them on, working with What's On In Epsom (Epsom & Ewell Business Awards). The same page sets out what changed: "Previously, entries were accepted from across the entire parliamentary constituency." Now only businesses within the borough can be nominated, and for the first time a business can be nominated in no more than three categories.
Paul Taylor, owner of What's On In Epsom and a past winner, gave the reason at the launch: "Previously, the awards included the Nork, Tadworth and Ashtead areas, with several winners being based in these locations outside the borough." If you trade in Ashtead, you are no longer eligible, however local your customers are.
Which categories
The council listed ten for the 2025 awards (Epsom & Ewell Borough Council): best small or independent business, retail business, pub, restaurant, business for customer service, commitment to the community, business for health and wellbeing, property and construction, professional services, and most sustainable or "green" business. With three nominations allowed, most small businesses have an obvious first choice in small or independent business, and two more that describe what they actually do.
When
For the 2025 awards, entries opened at 12pm on Tuesday 23 September 2025 and closed at 11:59pm on 31 December 2025, judging was set for January, and the winners were due to be announced in March 2026 (Epsom & Ewell Business Awards; Epsom & Ewell Borough Council). When we checked on 29 September 2026, neither site had announced the next round. Check both before you plan around a date.
What a win is worth
We found no evidence, from the organisers or anyone else, of what a local award does for a small business's trade. So this is our judgement, not a finding: an award helps most at the moment someone is choosing between you and another business, and least on the wall behind the till.
Put it where those choices are made. Near the enquiry form on your website, rather than on a page nobody opens, which is one of the homepage mistakes that quietly cost enquiries. In an update on your Google Business Profile, which our Google Business Profile guide covers. In proposals and quotes. Always with the year and the category, because "Winner, 2026" says something different in 2030, and a win nobody can date reads as decoration.
Entering is also a small, dated reason to talk to the people who know you, which is the best part of being part of a local business community.
If you are in the borough, our page for Epsom and Ewell businesses covers the rest of being found locally, from your listings to the town's own directory.
I founded oXo Creatives, an independent marketing agency and consultancy, in 2013 and run it full-time. Until 2026 I ran it alongside senior in-house roles at Google, NatWest, King, PlayStation and Meta.
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