A YORK man has scooped a top award for Marks & Spencer employees.

Colin Powell won the Plan A Innovator Award at the 16th annual Pride of M&S awards, which celebrates employees who go the extra mile to support their local communities.

Colin, 33, is a food operations manager at M&S Vangarde Monks Cross and started his career with the company 14 years ago.

He won the award in recognition of creating ‘Shwoptember’, based on the M&S initiative of Shwopping – which asks customers and staff to bring old items of clothing into an M&S store.

Colin was inspired by the Shwopping initiative to create Shwopping bingo cards for all employees.

Every time a colleague brought in a bag of Shwopping they were awarded a mark on their bingo card, and Colin negotiated with his local Oxfam store to donate a star prize for the person with the most marks.

He then presented his idea at a regional meeting and the initiative was rolled out across the region. This initiative led to the North Yorkshire region taking M&S’ Shwopping first place, having Shwopped 2,352 bags.

Colin said: “I’m honoured to receive the Pride of M&S award. The North Yorkshire region really got behind Shwoptember, and I hope this initiative inspires other regions to get involved.”