Project editors : Jennifer Duggan, Merrill Fabry, Lucy Feldman, Dan Macsai, Cate Matthews, and Nadia Suleman The third in Olga Polizzi’s mini-collection of hotels, the Star opened in its current guise in the medieval village of Alfriston in June 2021. This 15th-century inn, named southeast England hotel of the year in last year’s Best Places to Stay, was transformed with the design-focused eye of Polizzi and her daughter Alex, TV’s Hotel Inspector. Bedrooms in the original building and the modern Sixties-built wings are generous in size and lively in looks, with colourful patterned fabrics and original art on their walls. Food is a focus too, as Tim Kensett, an ex-River Café chef, assuredly uses excellent local produce. It has no hidden costs as it doesn’t charge for withdrawals, depositing money, transferring or closing your plan. You can also try out the app before you sign up.

The awards will recognise and celebrate organisations with the highest employee engagement and wellbeing levels which will in turn help winners of the awards attract, retain and recruit employees. Alice Hawthorn was a racehorse that galloped to glory more than 50 times in the 1840s. These days, put your money on her namesake, an 18th-century inn in Nun Monkton which was first past the post in our 2021 hotel awards, taking the title of best bolt hole in the north of England. On arrival you will nod to cows grazing on one of the UK’s oldest working greens — despite being just a 30-minute drive from York city centre. Before you know it, you’ll be ensconced in the airy, grade II listed inn, munching your way through superior pub grub. Then it’s a choice between cosy rooms upstairs or Scandi-cool garden suites, all glass fronts, fur throws and Douglas fir exteriors. This collection of 21 barns and cottages on a former dairy farm outside Coddenham was conceived as a balm for stressed-out souls, and with its sustainable ethos, fabulous kitchen, outdoor hot tub and country-chic interiors, it delivers handsomely. It’s good fun too, with young staff bringing a sociable atmosphere: at breakfast on a Saturday, the triple-height Great Barn is abuzz. But post breakfast and spa treatments, couples will want to hide away in cosy rooms done out with four-posters and luxuriously deep tubs. In the evening, chef Adam Spicer, a finalist in MasterChef: The Professionals, explains his tasting menu to diners while guitarist Peter Hemsworth plays singer-songwriter classics. Entry is exclusively through the WorkL for Business platform, with organisations asked to set up and send out a survey to their employees. The survey includes questions specially designed by employee experience experts across a range of engagement drivers including: Empowerment, Reward & Recognition, Job Satisfaction, Information Sharing, Wellbeing and Instilling Pride. Every organisation which enters will also receive a complimentary 12 months digital subscription to the Times and the Sunday Times.

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As each investor is different and will select different investments (particularly if they are a DIY investor) this makes it difficult to compare the performance. The Retreat at Elcot Park in Berkshire has been named The Times and Sunday Times hotel of the year, topping the annual list of 100 of Britain’s best hotels.

Link: The Sunday Times Awards or read our dedicated guide to these awards https://awards-list.co.uk/the-sunday-times-best-places-to-work-powered-by-workl/ Companies can now survey their employees through their online platform throughout the year, rather than just the once. Mainland China now has the fourth-highest number of institutions in the top 200 (11, compared with 10 last year), having overtaken Australia, which has dropped to fifth (joint with the Netherlands). Links: Europe https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/europe/ UK & Ireland https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/uk-ireland/ North America https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/northamerica/ Australasia https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/australasia/ Asia https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/asia/ Middle East Africa https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/mid-east-africa/ Latin America https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/awards/latin-america/

If you’re in the mood for sand dunes, salty air and quaint villages, then you can’t go wrong with the Globe, a gastropub with rooms overlooking a leafy Georgian square in Wells-next-the-Sea, the bunting-festooned unofficial capital of the north Norfolk coast. In the warmer months, this is a shrine to the Great British summer, as guests sip chilled pints in the parasol-shaded courtyard terrace within sniffing distance of the sea. Its refurbished rooms are now awash with the colours of the coast, and its restaurant menu serves up the magic of East Anglia on a silver platter — seafood fans, this one’s for you. The capital’s hotel scene got an exciting injection of pace with the arrival of this pleasure palace. The urban outpost of Gleneagles, Scotland’s famous country house estate, is a cheeky reinvention of a Bank of Scotland branch office. Action centres around the Spence, the former vast banking hall whose extravagance of pink columns, intricate cornicing and showstopping cupola have been wrestled into a fabulous, informal, all-day meeting place. The 33 bedrooms are a kilt-meets-gilt ode to both their Lothian and Palladian roots. A nightcap at the spectacular rooftop bar should see you sleep through the trams rumbling by below on St Andrew Square.