Young Business Person Awards
The Chester Business Club Young Business Person Awards, launched by Chester Business Club in 2025, exist to find, recognise, nurture and champion the city’s brightest young business talent. They celebrate a rising generation of entrepreneurs turning school-age side-hustles and lightbulb ideas into real enterprises, powered by the opportunities new technology, AI and social media now offer.
Magnifying Chester's Next Generation
What they needed support with
Chester, where Magnify PR is based, is full of young people with ideas, energy and ambition, but too many of them never get the room, the recognition or the encouragement to take the next step, and that gap is what led Nick Owens and Magnify PR to launch the Young Business Person Awards through Chester Business Club.
How we delivered
The awards put those young people directly in front of the city’s business community, some already running companies, others still shaping an idea, all with the confidence to try, the discipline to build and the courage to put themselves forward. The first awards launched in 2025 at Chester Business Club’s 39th Annual Banquet, bringing together school pupils, young founders and early-stage entrepreneurs. Magnify PR has continued to lead and sponsor the awards, alongside Connectus Business Solutions, Aqueous Digital and DEESURVEYS.
What the results were
By 2026, the programme had grown again, attracting its largest number of entries since launch and producing an 11-strong shortlist across the Vision Award and Young Entrepreneur of the Year categories. In 2026, every finalist received a prize, including Chester BID vouchers worth at least £100. The wider numbers show why the initiative matters: almost 900 new businesses have been created in three years across CH1 to CH4 by founders aged 30 and under, and Chester now sits in the UK top ten for the highest concentration of business owners aged 25 and under.
