Halt to retail judging puts pause on Tamworth Quality Business Awards timeline

Tickets for the event were meant to have gone on sale on Friday, August 6, with finalists to be announced on the 20^th and the gala night planned for September 10.

However, like most things, it has been heavily interrupted by the current Tamworth local government area (LGA) lockdown.

Tamworth Business Chamber board member, Caroline Lumley, said there are things that cannot be done under the current health orders.

"At this stage we have suspended judging this week, because the customer service categories require mystery shopping, and that is not appropriate with COVID and our current lockdown," she said.

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"So we're currently in negotiation and discussion with Business NSW who run the regional and state awards, which we feed into, to just discuss what timelines could look like after this lockdown period concludes."

Stay-at-home orders are currently in place for both the Tamworth and Armidale LGAs, with confirmed COVID-19 cases in the latter.

But Ms Lumley said she still had hope the awards night would eventually be allowed to go ahead.

"Obviously we would still very much like for the awards to proceed, but for us the most important stage at this point is to get judging concluded, and of course that can't happen during lockdown," she said.

"And once a decision is made on this lockdown period we'll look at how we might be able to massage our timeframes to see how we can deliver an awards program."

Nominations for the awards were at a seven-year high in 2021, with new categories being introduced and people showing their support for local businesses who have battled on through tough conditions.

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