Awards

Queens Award for Enterprise: International Trade 2011

We are thrilled to announce that Toby Churchill Ltd has been awarded the 2011 Queens Award For Enterprise within the category of International Trade for the sales of the Lightwriter communication aid.  Sales of this product spans across 23 countries worldwide and it is translated into 13 different languages.

Since the change of ownership of the company from Toby Churchill to our current owner, David Collison, the company’s turnover has grown to £4.3m a year, of which 75% is exports.
In commenting on the announcement of the 2011 Queens Award for Enterprise, David Collison, stated “Four years ago it was a great honour to take over the company that Toby Churchill, himself, had started in 1973.  I am delighted that we have this public recognition of the great work that Toby commenced, which I now carry on through my stewardship.”
 

BHTA Independent Living Design Awards - 2008

Toby Churchill Ltd’s Lightwriter^® SL40 won third place in the Independent Living Design Awards 2008, the first AAC device to be recognised in this way. These prestigious awards, which are organised and run by the BHTA,  set out to recognise innovations which aid independent living.

Queen's Award for Export - 1995 - 1996

 As a small company, we were very pleased to win this prestigious award firstly in 1995, and for a second year in 1996. A total of 140 companies in the United Kingdom were granted this award in 1995, of which only 3 were in the Healthcare sector, and we are the only communication aid manufacturer to have received the Queen's Award.

Our export sales have been growing steadily over the years but had been limited principally to English-speaking countries prior to the advent of speech synthesisers capable of synthesising European languages.

With Lightwriters^® available with a full range of European languages, many more people outside English-speaking countries are able to benefit from these communication aids.

Department of Trade and Industry's Languages for Export Award - 1996

 The Department of Trade and Industry's Languages for Export Awards scheme aims to encourage British businesses to increase their use of foreign languages to help increase their export performance.

The New Technologies Award is open
"to companies . . . which have successfully developed an information or communication technology-based product . . . to assist companies to overcome foreign language and/or culture barriers in non-English speaking markets."

Having developed a broad range of European languages on the Lightwriter^® has enabled us to extend our export markets into most countries in the European Community, and we were pleased to be selected by the National Council for Educational Technology as the regional winner of the New Technologies Award in 1996.

British Design Award - 1989

This award is granted by the British Design Council to reflect outstanding product design. The Lightwriter^® was given this award in 1989.

Care in the Community Award -

The citation stated: "An award winner will have all the qualities you would expect to find from a first class communication aids company. Their quality of service will be second to none as will their track record of customer relationships, customer care and personal attention. Toby Churchill Ltd. has been providing all these qualities and more for many years which is why they were presented with the Journal Publishing Company's Award of Merit."

Brussels Inventors Exhibition - First Prize - 1971

This was the first time that a British invention won the first prize in the 22 year history of the exhibition (1971).
The Lightwriter^® was also featured on the BBC Tomorrow's World programme.