LONDON — The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) has named the winning agency and in-house teams at its first in-person national awards ceremony for two years.

More than 500 PR professionals from across the UK attended the event, hosted by Alistair Campbell (pictured), the former spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy for prime minister Tony Blair, as well as a mental health campaigner.

FleishmanHillard UK was named as the large agency of the year, while Real Chemistry (formerly W2O) won the international consultancy award, Cirkle was medium-sized consultancy of the year and Pangolin won the small agency category. Fight or Flight, the B2B technology specialist set up by former Weber execs last year, was named as the best new agency.

Ketchum won the Diversity award, and built environment agency BECG was named as the best specialist consultancy of the year. The in-house teams of the year were at not-for-profit care and housing organisation Anchor and enterprise software firm Red Hat.

People Like Us founding brothers Sheeraz Gulsher and Darain Faraz, who set up the networking group for Black and ethnic minority talent in the marcomms and media industries last year, were named as “Industry Trailblazers”, while Milk & Honey PR founder Kirsty Leighton was named as PR leader of the year, and Stephen Waddington won the Mark Mellor Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award.

Of the campaign awards, The Academy won campaign of the year for its 'Pandemic, Purpose and Planet' work with Morrisons supermarket.

Other agency winners in the campaign categories included Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick, Brands2Life, Hope&Glory, W Communications, Red Consultancy, Interel, WE Communications, Shook, Common Industry, Smarts, Pic PR, Engine Mischief and Third City.

In-house teams who won for their campaigns included Novartis, Marie Curie, the Metropolitan Police, LNER, the Government Communication Service, O2, Hearst UK and Lloyds Banking Group,

The awards were sponsored by 3Gem, Carma, Censuswide, DeHavilland, Kantar, LexisNexis, Markettiers, Milk & Honey PR, Polpeo, Reuben Sinclair and Vuelio.

PRCA director general Francis Ingham said: “Over the past 12 months, our industry has proved its enormous reliance, importance, and power. The PRCA UK National Awards was an exclamation mark on its roaring return.”