The big winner at this year’s Newbury Weekly News Best in Business Awards was Heritage Estate Planning, which picked up both the Best Professional Services award and the top prize of the night by being named West Berkshire's Business of 2023/24.
Heritage is based on Greenham Business Park and it provides its customers with quality professional estate planning and will writing services.
Founder and managing director Alison Ilott was overwhelmed with the award night success.
She said: “It feels amazing. I’m still not sure it’s sunk in to be honest.
“We weren’t expecting to win professional services either. We knew both other businesses in the category, and you feel like you have imposter syndrome when you run a business and I just thought: ‘They’re so much better than us.’
“It was such a lovely surprise for both me and my team.”
Ms Ilott started the business by herself when she was made redundant eight years ago.
She had recently had a baby at the time as well, so Heritage Estate Planning began as a part-time project for her back in 2016.
She said: “I just thought of it as a way to earn some money in order to support my family and you kind of didn’t think beyond that.
“I just thought it was going to be something I did at a desk at home and that was it. It was scary at the time but now I absolutely love it and it was totally the right thing to do.
The business has steadily grown since then, and Ms Ilott said that she felt as if the company was on the precipice of achieving something great when it entered a successful period eight months ago.
She added: “Our mission was to make wills accessible for anybody that needed it and to provide that service in a really friendly way.
“We saw that we were filling a gap. We are qualified and regulated so we feel like we are in a nice sweet spot.
“It’s been a long time coming but I do feel like we’re in a really, really good place now.”
Ms Ilott recalled the moment when Heritage Estate Planning was named the best business in West Berkshire.
She said: “I don’t even think we were listening properly.
“I was chatting to some people at Red76 and all of a sudden I heard the category was announced and then I heard Heritage Estate Planning and thought ‘that can’t have just been said.’
“I literally couldn’t believe it. We were all on a real high after getting that. It is such a massive accolade so we’re delighted.”
She said the win was a massive personal achievement for her, but that she couldn’t have done it without the rest of her team.
She said: “I’ve got such a lovely team and I am so lucky. It makes it all worthwhile, definitely.”
Ms Ilott hopes that long-term in the future she can retire and live abroad in the sun, while leaving the business in the hands of her capable daughter Daisy, who currently works full-time at Heritage.
