PRESS RELEASE : UK celebrates service to others in HM The King’s New Year Honours [December 2023]
The press release issued by the Cabinet Office on 29 December 2023.
The New Year Honours List 2024 recognises selfless service to others from individuals across the UK.
More than 1,200 recipients have been awarded for their exceptional achievements, with a focus on those who have given with generosity to others in need.
Individuals have been recognised for being dedicated community champions, role models in sport, pioneers in the arts, passionate health workers, and supporters of young people.
The Prime Minister is committed to ensuring that honours are awarded to people across the whole of the UK, so that the honours system captures and celebrates the fantastic contribution of people throughout the country.
Anyone can nominate someone for an honour. If you know someone who has achieved fantastic things worthy of recognition, go to https://www.gov.uk/honours to find out more about how you can put them forward.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said:
The New Year Honours List recognises the exceptional achievements of people across the country and those who have shown the highest commitment to selflessness and compassion.
To all honourees, you are the pride of this country and an inspiration to us all.
Deputy Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Oliver Dowden CBE MP, said:
This year’s New Year Honours List celebrates the most selfless, compassionate people in the UK. I send them all my warmest congratulations for what they have achieved.
Our historic honours system exists to recognise these people and shine a light on their heroic contributions and achievements.
I hope that the inspiring stories from across the whole of the UK encourage more people to nominate others for an honour in future.
Community
Sarah Graham has been awarded an MBE for services to Ukrainian refugees. Based in Buckinghamshire, Sarah has brought together over 50 host families and 155 volunteers across a number of villages through her organisation, Hilltops Ukrainian Support Community.
Jacqueline Savage from County Durham has been awarded an MBE for services to social care. She has worked in children’s education, children’s social care and adult social care for the last 30 years. She draws on her own experiences of having a neurological condition to develop staff to ensure that people accessing adult social care receive care of a high standard.
Elizabeth Hall from Kent has been awarded an MBE for services to tackling hygiene poverty. She is the founder of The Hygiene Bank which, during the pandemic, delivered over £300,000 worth of donations. It currently has over 154 active local projects, roughly 2,000 community partners and leads more than 479 volunteers.
Dr John Morrison (Morris) Brown has been awarded a BEM for services to the community in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He was instrumental in setting up the Castlederg Patient Comfort and Terminally Ill Fund which has raised more than £500,000 to date and supported around 600 local people and families.
Felicity Dahl has been awarded a DBE for services to philanthropy, to literature and to young people. She set up Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity in 1991 in memory of Roald Dahl. The charity works in partnership with the NHS to provide specialist nurses and support for seriously ill children living with complex, lifelong conditions.
Young people
Tony Hudgell is this year’s youngest recipient. At 9 years old, he has been awarded a BEM for services to the prevention of child abuse. He has raised over £1.8m for the hospital that saved his life after he suffered horrific abuse as a baby. Along with his adoptive mother, he founded the Tony Hudgell Foundation in 2021 to support and help vulnerable children, and has also inspired an English law change to increase prison sentences for those convicted of child cruelty and neglect.
Camilla Bowry has been awarded an OBE for services to charity. Camilla is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sal’s Shoes, based in Surrey, which donates school shoes to children in need. As of November 2021, she had collected over 2,750,000 pairs of shoes and donated them to 52 countries.
Carole Richardson has been awarded an MBE for services to young people. Based in Angus, Scotland, Carole joined the Board of Rossie Young People’s Trust which provides residential care, education, health and psychological services to vulnerable and troubled young people in the UK. Over 650 young people have lived at Rossie since Carole’s involvement.
Ian Russell has been awarded an MBE for services to child safety online. Since Ian’s daughter, Molly, took her own life as a result of harmful content online, Ian has set-up a charitable foundation in her memory. He has also contributed to the establishment of the Online Safety Bill.
Amanda Chadwick from Greater Manchester is the Founder and Trustee of Pyjama Fairies and has been awarded an MBE for services to children in hospital. The charity has given over 50,000 handmade pyjamas to children in across 150 hospitals.
Health
Lynne Kelly, based in South Glamorgan, Wales, is Chair and Trustee of Haemophilia Wales and has been awarded a CBE for services to people with haemophilia. Lynne was pivotal to the campaign to produce safe recombinant factor VIII and IX concentrates for treatment of haemophilia in Wales, which was the first country in the world to do so.
Jahangir Alom has been awarded a BEM for services to tackling health inequalities, particularly during COVID-19. His efforts helped build public trust in the national vaccination programme and raise awareness of the experiences of ethnic minorities. He also works at Selfless UK, a charity which alleviates poverty in rural Bangladesh.
Dr Fenella Wrigley, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Chief Executive for the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust, has been awarded an MBE for services to the NHS. In 2019, she led a collaborative health system which saw Emergency Department conveyance safely reduced by 8% and 70% of mental health patients managed nearer home.
Sport
Bronwin Carter from Hampshire is a Paralympic coach who has been awarded a BEM for her services to sport. She has dedicated 30 years to voluntary service in sports at all levels including coaching at the Paralympics. She was 11 times Weightlifting World Champion and 11 times Weightlifting European Champion. She is based in Portsmouth, Hampshire.
Robert Christie from Angus, Scotland, is Head Coach at Scotland Paralympic Lawn Bowls Team and has been awarded an MBE for services to lawn bowls. He helped Team Scotland three gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in 2022, and more broadly he has supported people living with a disability to discover and excel in the sport.
David Finlay from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, has been awarded an MBE for services to Olympic wrestling. He was prevented from boxing after losing an eye in childhood, so took up freestyle wrestling. For over 40 years now he has devoted his life to the development of Olympic Freestyle Wrestling and has volunteered his time to prepare athletes and coaches for competition.
For her international excellence, Mary Earps has been awarded an MBE for services to Association Football. Mary plays as goalkeeper for Manchester United in the Women’s Super League and for the England national team. She is now officially the world’s best female goalkeeper.
Sir Bill Beaumont has been recognised with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire for services to rugby union football and to charity. He has dedicated, and continues to dedicate, his life to the sport of rugby. As well as being a decorated player himself, as Chairman of World Rugby he has led the introduction of governance reforms and measures to improve gender balance within World Rugby governance.
Arts
Michael Eavis, founder and leader of Glastonbury Festival, has been recognised with a knighthood for services to music and charity. The Festival contributes more than £2 million to charities and good causes each festival year.
Author Kate Mosse has been awarded a CBE for services to literature, to women and to charity. She is a champion of diversity and female equality. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, of which she is a co-founder, is now one of the biggest literary prizes in the world.
Stuart Murphy has been awarded a CBE for services to opera. Under his leadership during the pandemic, the English National Opera manufactured scrubs for NHS staff and initiated a clinical recovery programme for COVID-19 survivors.
Finally, Dame Shirley Bassey DBE becomes the 64th living member of the Order of the Companion of Honour in recognition of her services to music. This is in recognition of Dame Shirley’s remarkable career which has seen her sell more than 135 million records.
The honours system strives to be inclusive of all of the UK society. Of the 1,227 people who receive an award:
- 1,073 candidates have been selected at BEM, MBE and OBE level:
- 377 at BEM
- 460 at MBE
- 236 at OBE
- 811 (66%) of the recipients are people who have undertaken outstanding work in their communities either in a voluntary or paid capacity;
- 770 (63.4%) of the recipients live outside of London and the South East
- 588 women are recognised in the List, representing 48% of the total:
- 42.2% of recipients at CBE level and above are women;
- 13.8% of the successful candidates come from an ethnic minority background:
- 7.4% of recipients are from an Asian ethnic group;
- 4.8% of recipients are from a black ethnic group;
- 0.8% of recipients with a mixed ethnic background;
- 0.6% of recipients come from another ethnic background;
