John Ball urges you to celebrate access excellence

The deadline for entries to this year's IAPAs (International Awards for Powered Access) has passed and once again the quality and geographical diversity of the submissions is impressive

The judges will be meeting on Friday 22 January and AI will publish the awad shortlists soon after the meeting. The judges have a difficult job ahead of them with the number of submissions up around a quarter to over 80.

The IAPAs are organised jointly by Access International and IPAF (International Powered Access Federation). John Ball, IPAF's president said, "These awards celebrate excellence in our industry, an industry which now at 40 years old can sustainably support such a concept."

The first IAPA's were held last year in Dublin alongside the IPAF Summit, a combination which Mr Ball thinks is ideal.

"We made a good start in Dublin last year," he said, "we were pleased with the numbers of entries and the quality. I expect this year's event in London to be equally successful - it is our intention to take the Summit and the IAPAs to major cities round Europe."

After last year's event Mr Ball said that he received numerous emails from attendees saying how much they had enjoyed the event - even more telling, he said were the emails from those people who were disappointed that they hadn't attended. Around 400 people attended the Dublin awards.

Tickets for the 2010 IAPAs held at the Grange St Paul's Hotel in London on 25 March 2010 are on sale at www.ipaf.org/iapa or go to www.khl.com/iapa for more information.