Winner Best Cookery School 2013

This annual event celebrates the crème de la crème of cookery schools in the UK as selected by industry expert judges including Nigel Barden from BBC Radio 2, Xanthe Clay from The Daily Telegraph and Anthony Warner from Premier Foods.

The glittering awards ceremony took place in London on Monday 11 November at Vintners Hall, a venue steeped in history and inextricably linked with fine food and wine. The Best Small Cookery Award was one of the most sought after awards of the night, with a huge number of entrants, whittled down to a shortlist of seven.

On presenting the award, host Nigel Barden said that The Cooking School at Dean Clough had inspired the judges with its unique and innovative apprenticeship programme and the obvious buzz and passion shown by the young chef apprentices.

Matthew Benson-Smith, Chef Director of The Cooking School at Dean Clough was there to collect the award along with the team. He said, "We are delighted to win such a prestigious award in the cookery school world. We're so passionate about sharing our love of cooking with our customers, young people on our chef apprenticeship programme and the wider community - and this award is testament to that."

We all had a fantastic night and got the chance to meet and learn from many other cookery schools from up and down the country. Now we're looking forward to a year of being the best small cookery school in the UK and launching more exciting ways to help our community get cooking.