National Crimebeat’s Annual Awards took place at The Royal National Hotel in London on Tuesday 17th March 2026, where over 135 VIP guests plus our finalists celebrated the amazing achievements of the 7 young teams from across England – sadly no finalists from Wales this year.
First prize this year was awarded to the impressive project from the London Borough of Hayes, Making Hayes Safer. The project, developed in response to increasing levels of youth violence, is led by the inspirational Dillon Fleming and engages young people at risk of exploitation and serious youth violence through targeted mentoring, accredited sports training, parenting support and trauma informed interventions. The results are excellent and the streets of Hayes are evidentially safer for young people.
National Crimebeat is the High Sheriffs’ Association’s own charity, celebrating young people who co-produce and deliver youth crime prevention or victim support projects within their local communities across England and Wales. Volunteer Trustees are either former High Sheriffs or finalists of the competition and bring with them a broad spectrum of geography and expertise.
The HSA continues to provide some essential sponsorship towards the Awards, and this year, as for many years, the incredibly generosity of the Imperial Hotels Group and the Walduck family in providing our venue and refreshments for free has helped to make the National Crimebeat Awards a really joyous occasion. Other sponsors have included DeterTech (formally known as Smartwater) and private family trusts, together with the Fishmongers Livery Company. Our sponsors enable us to present the National Crimebeat Awards as well as rewarding all finalist teams with cash prizes to go towards the sustainability of their projects. We are always looking for additional sponsors – if you have any ideas please let us know – especially if they have a link to crime prevention or young people
This year we had three independent judges as part of the judging panel, who were blown away by the quality of the applications. Andy Bliss QPM (HS West Sussex 2023), was chair of the judging panel and was joined by Chief Constable Catherine Roper from Wiltshire Police, HHJ Rosa Dean, senior judge at Snaresbrook, and Mark Fitzpatrick from DeterTech with Grania Phillips (HS Devon 2018) and Theresa Peltier (HS Derbyshire 2023) providing much needed support. The judging process is one of those difficult but inspirational tasks as each entry is carefully scrutinised against the broad criteria of a project that must prevent or reduce the incidence of crime or assist victims of crime and most importantly must be delivered and managed to some extent by the young people (under the age of 25). This year was made even more difficult with a record number of entries to be scrutinised.
Each team of finalists is asked to present their project at the Awards ceremony. Being able to stand in front of a room of VIPs and fellow finalists is incredibly daunting to many of these young people but they all rose to the challenge.. Every project eloquently demonstrated the real power of young people coming together to make their communities safer.
The Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London, Colonel Jane Davis, attended together with High Sheriffs from each county that had a finalist and a number of High Sheriffs in Nomination. The seven varied presentations were themselves judged and an additional prize was awarded for the best presentation on the day as well a further special award chosen by the Chairman of the HSA.
The Richard Walduck Award, made in memory of Richard Walduck (HS Hertfordshire 1997) was presented by his son, Alex Walduck, to the Peasedown Mini Police from Somerset. The Burnett Award for the best presentation went to Oceanside Records from Devon who delivered their presentation through rap – a first for the National Crimebeat Awards! And the same team also won the Special High Sheriff Associations’ Award.
Award Winners in full:
Winner: Making Hayes Safer, Great London
Runner up: Project Prevent, Warwickshire
3rd Place: Preventing Bicycle Theft, East Sussex
Highly Commended: Red Flag Awareness, Bedfordshire
Highly Commended: Oceanside Records, Devon
Highly Commended: VAWG Champions, Kent
The Richard Walduck Award: Peasedown Mini Police, Somerset
Special High Sheriff Award:. Oceanside Records, Devon
The Burnett Presentation Award: Oceanside Records, Devon
The first, second and third placed projects were particularly inspiring – very different and yet making a real impact on their communities. Equally, the judges found it hard to put them ahead of our three highly commended projects. The forthcoming new National Crimebeat website will have more information on each of the projects, please be patient as the website is a work in progress!
Once the Award Ceremony finished and all the official photos were completed it was time for the finalists and their High Sheriffs to enjoy a tasty lunch before leaving on a Big Bus tour of London, generously donated by the Big Bus Company and then a ride on the London Eye before returning home to their counties, exhausted by all accounts.
Mandy Thorn MBE DL
Chair, National Crimebeat