Dare Devil, the monthly award that recognises the incredible work done across Ashdown Phillips by both staff and partners, is back for 2021 with a new look. We already have some fantastic stories to kick off the ‘Dare to Be Brilliant’ year.

Marie Kyriacou-Edwards and Rebecca Bird of Edmonton Green Shopping Centre have been crowned our December 2020 winners for their amazing work over the Christmas period with their local Salvation Army, who had received a 50% increase in referrals for vulnerable families in the area.

Despite only being with the business a couple of weeks, Retail Manager Rebecca put together the marketing appeal for the campaign and had it posted in local press, while Operations Manager Marie also contacted the centre’s service partners to ask for support, leading to generous donations from customers and £6,500 worth of goods from partners to support the charity’s work.

Our January 2021 Dare Devil was Administrator Emma Taylor, who received several nominations from teammates across the business for work on tasks as varied as creating an app user guide for people participating in our Step into Spring walking challenge, helping to re-brand and re-organise the voting processes for the Dare Devil awards and for getting to grips with new client reporting templates within a tight timeframe.

Our Dare Devil Partner scheme has now been extended to include all our stakeholders, including service partners, clients, occupiers and members of the local community, allowing us to thank a wider range of people that we work with day to day.

In December 2020, Simon Hall of CTS Group, the IT and telecoms providers at Milton Park, Oxfordshire, received only two days’ notice that the power would need to be down on the site to enable essential works. He and his team quickly sprang into action, informing occupiers and reassuring them that service would be resumed as soon as possible. However, when a power supply was tripped resulting in delays, Simon stayed on site until the issue could be resolved, making himself available to occupiers to answer questions and keep people informed. Thanks to Simon, what could have been a hugely disruptive event went smoothly and occupiers were kept happy.

Our January 2021 Dare Devil Partner is Nauman Akhtar of Allied Universal Security, who showed great initiative in dealing with a leak in an occupier space late at night at The Loom, London.

As well as implementing measures to collect water and stop it from causing further damage, he also kept the building manager up to date with the situation and continued to keep the occupier informed, putting the manager’s mind at ease and resulting in fantastic feedback from the occupier.

Congratulations to all our winners!