The wait is over and winners of the inaugural Advertizer Community and Business Awards have been crowned.

Hundreds of people filled the Venue at Park Hall on Sunday afternoon to celebrate Oswestry’s best businesses and community champions.

A total of 18 trophies were handed out to the deserving winners, as voted by our readers.

The awards were launched last September in conjunction with Oswestry Town Council, and readers flooded the office with hundreds of nominations and then thousands of votes – which took more than two days to count!

Tizer editor Colin Channon said: “When we launched the awards I never imagined it would be so well supported. We have been stunned by the reaction.

“Never in our wildest dreams did we expect almost 4,000 votes to be cast by readers.

“We’ve already started work on next year’s awards to see how we can make them even bigger and better. We have some ideas already!”

Special thanks go to the town council, compere for the afternoon, BBC Radio Shropshire’s James Bond, The Venue for hosting the event, and the British Ironwork Centre for making the trophies.

n Don’t miss the Advertizer next week for a special supplement on the awards, with a full round-up of winners’ reactions and photographs galore!