THE stars were out last week – but these ones weren’t in the sky … or behind the wheel.
Reading Buses annual celebration saw it honour its staff, including drivers, engineers and office teams.
The Night With The Stars event was held at the Hilton Hotel in Kennet Island, acknowledging the company’s many excellent workers, based on its Star of the Month scheme.
The Star of the Year was Simon Gold, who was honoured for his work behind the scenes on the company’s systems and his project management of the rollout of the tap on, tap off system.
He had been initially named as Support Star winner.
Honours also went to Engineering Star Milan Gurung, whose win was for what the company said was his calm and unflappable manner working in the company’s parts store. He also completed an apprenticeship this year as well as taking on more responsibility in his role.
Reading Buses said that its Driving Star was Stuart Pritchard, who won for providing consistently detailed and constructive reports and feedback of his observations and experiences while out driving to help make improvements and changes for the benefit of all.
He has been praised by his managers as being consistently excellent in all aspects of his role.
The company also recognised Simon Wong, crowned Customer Champion, Toby Yapp, Community Hero, Stuart Kirby, Charity Champion and Simon Gard, Rising Star.
Robert Williams, Reading Buses’ Chief Executive Officer, was delighted to present the awards.
“The celebration also includes retirees, long service awards, stars of the month, Going the Extra Mile winners, employees earning qualifications, those who have garnered external recognition, done great things for charity, generated the most customer compliments, and our drivers with the best DriveWell telematics scores,” he said.
This year the company had a special guest compere, the voice of onboard bus announcements and radio personality David Sheppard.
A raffle raised more than £1,000 for Reading Buses’ Charity of the Year, the Royal Berks Charity.
The amount included a huge £200 donation from driver Chris van Niekirk, and £100 from the winner of the cash prize in the raffle, Ray Newman, who immediately donated the money to the charity.
