ONE of Cumbria's biggest success stories has spoken of the how the help it received from winning CN Group's Business Boost competition helped it to grow.

Sally's Cottages, which has its headquarters in Keswick, was one of the competition's winners back in 2015.

And as the deadline for entries is extended, owner Sally Fielding urged other firms to get involved.

The holiday letting agency was set up in 2003 with one cottage and £1,000 in the bank and last year it brought in £6m-worth of bookings for more than 400 cottages.

It has done well in award competitions, most recently taking the small leisure and tourism business in the Cumbria Family Business Awards.

Its success in Business Boost though still stands out and owner Sally Fielding is keen to see more small firms get involved.

She said: “Business Boost was really useful for us as a smaller business to receive a local award that had been decided by people from Cumbria that also had such a great prize. As a small business to receive £10,000 worth of free advertising it’s a lot of money and it’s almost like we’re working together as businesses and the CN Group is saying that it believes in you as a business.

“We found that the prize was really helpful, we tend to advertise to two different groups of people; people who want to stay in cottages and people who want to let them out and the business boost prize was great for finding more cottage owners. We took on 60 cottages last year and we were the only local agency to do so and it’s been fantastic."

She added: “Working in Cumbria, we have such a great small business community and we all rely on one another and Business Boost is another example of us all helping each other. It’s definitely worth giving it a go, you never know what might happen.”

A total of six businesses will win £10,000 to spend on advertising in our newspapers and associated websites – there will be one winner from each category for north, west and south Cumbria.

The deadline for entries is now Friday, March 31. For full information visit www.newsandstar.co.uk/businessboost.