THE voice of the region, BBC Radio York broadcaster Colin Hazelden, will host this year's Evening Press Business Awards' glittering presentation dinner at The Merchant Adventurer's Hall on Thursday, November 30.

Mr Hazelden is producer and presenter of North Yorkshire Tonight, the two-and-a half-hour news digest which includes two business updates and broadcasts on weekdays from 4.30pm on BBC Radio York. He joins fellow broadcaster Harry Gration, who will be guest speaker at the awards.

Judges are now poring over the thousands of words in the bumper crop of submissions for this year's Evening Press Business Awards 2000 in order to whittle them down to just 24 in the running - three finalists for each of the eight categories, all of whom will feature in awards videos.

Sponsors are Barclays Bank (Small Business of the Year), North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council (Progress Through People Award), Compris (Best Innovative Use of New Technology), Yorkshire Water (Best Environmental Company), York and North Yorkshire Export Forum (Exporter of the Year), Torch Telecom (Growth Business of the Year), Garbutt & Elliott (Business Personality of the Year) and DE Ford insurance brokers (New Business of the Year).

To help you judge for yourselves the high standard, two more examples of entrants are featured below and right.