Robins & Day rewarded its most deserving staff and dealers as more than 400 guests gathered for its annual Excellence Awards.

The PSA Group-owned dealer group, which has 40 sites nationwide representing Peugeot, Citroën and DS brands, welcomed staff, managers and their partners to its annual awards night at the VOX at Resorts World on the NEC complex near Birmingham.

The event was hosted by TV comedian Romesh Ranganathan and Robins & Day chief executive James Weston.

More than 30 awards were up fro grabs, across all areas of the business from technician team to sales advisor.

Weston said: "This is a highly-anticipated evening cross our group. During the year we publish monthly leagues across all areas of our business showing individual, team and dealership performances and this evening is the culmination, where the very best are recognised and rewarded. We always invite partners to appreciate their role in supporting our staffs’ success”

For Weston's first year in charge of the group, he made some changes to the structure. He said: “It's vital to recognise not just the individual, but also the team performance, so this year we introduced Team of the Year awards for each key department across our dealers.

“And to ensure every dealer was fully engaged, we added two extra dealership awards; Most Improved Dealership, and People’s Choice Dealership.

“The latter allowed dealers to nominate themselves, not based on pure results, but initiatives taken to engage their own staff and build up team camaraderie. The response was phenomenal, and the ultimate decision made by regional and head office vote was very close.”

Key 2016 winners included: 

  • Dealership of the Year Award – Robins & Day Liverpool
  • People’s Choice - Robins & Day Chelmsford
  • Most Improved Dealership - Robins & Day Bristol Cribbs (which also won Peugeot’s prestigious Guild of Gold Lion Award for 2016)

In 2016 Robins & Day developed overall turnover by over 10%, based on volume increases in new car of 6.3% and used cars of 10%, with parts activity also showing significant growth on the year.

Weston said: "This is a fantastic time for us. In the middle of last year, we rebranded to bring our Citroën and DS businesses under the Robins and Day brand, a brand with more than 100 years of trading history.

“We have a whole range of initiatives to further develop our staff engagement. We recently launched these, together with our whole 2017 strategy, to all general managers and dealership line managers at our 2017 Brand Conference, and they will be at the forefront of our activity in 2017.”