Good morning colleagues and I hope you're well.

What an amazing evening we had yesterday celebrating everything our fabulous colleagues at #TeamCHFT do every day at our 2026 CHuFT Awards ceremony.

More than 300 people in a packed-out room at The Arches in Halifax heard our winners announced, with the cheers getting louder as the evening progressed. Returning to host was our Medical Director, Neeraj Bhasin, who yet again brought a massive energy to the night. His entrance, along with an amazing performance by Punjabi Roots, will stay with me, and I'm sure everyone there, for a long time to come.

You can read the winners’ inspirational stories in this special edition of CHFT News. It was just a shame we couldn’t invite all our 451 nominees, so we've captured a quick video snapshot of the evening. A huge well done if you received a nomination, and thank you to everyone who took the time to put a colleague or team forward.

I also wanted to give a shout-out to the teams behind the scenes who made the event happen, with a special mention to Organisational Development’s (OD) Frances Dowson, James Teal and Chloe Goodwin. Frances even made button holes and corsages for the support team with a touch of yellow, to fit with the summer theme of the Awards. The OD Team will be following up with CHuFT on the Road soon so that everyone nominated can be rightly recognised, so watch this space.

Our Awards were fully sponsored too, and without the generous donations from Equans Albany (Calderdale Hospital SPC), Laing O'Rourke, AECOM, Arcadis and ISS, we wouldn’t have been able to put on such a fantastic celebration.

Enjoy reading this special edition - what came across loud and clear last night from our winners as they accepted their awards was a true sense of being part of a family here at CHFT.

It’s been fantastic to celebrate some of the key achievements of our colleagues over the past 12 months, and I can only see more progress in the coming year.

Rob