Offploy Recognised With a 2026 Princess Royal Training Award

Awarded by the City & Guilds Foundation, on behalf of HRH The Princess Royal

Offploy is delighted to announce that we have been recognised for a second time, with a Princess Royal Training Award. Awarded by the City & Guilds Foundation on behalf of HRH The Princess Royal, this 2026 Award celebrates our R3 Certificate in Reintegration and Reducing Reoffending, and sits alongside those given to just 56 organisations across the whole of the UK this year, out of hundreds of applicants.

Now in their eleventh year, the Princess Royal Training Awards recognise employers whose training programmes make a measurable difference to people, organisations and communities. More than 300 employers have received the Award over its first ten years, and this year’s 56 recipients range from small charities to national names such as Balfour Beatty. It means a great deal to be named alongside organisations of that scale for a programme built specifically to help people with convictions rebuild their lives.

A rigorous assessment

Getting here wasn’t a formality. Our application progressed to the Application Review Process, a virtual visit in May from an independent Assessor Team who spent the morning testing our claims from every angle: a walkthrough of the R3 platform, a strategic overview from our leadership, a look at how the programme was designed, insight from the managers who oversee it day to day, and, most importantly, reflections from the people who have actually completed it.

That last part mattered most to us. The R3 Certificate exists to help frontline advisors, the people supporting candidates with convictions into work and housing, do that job with more skill and more confidence. Having those advisors speak for themselves, in their own words, to an independent panel was the best possible test of whether the programme does what we built it to do.

Why this recognition matters

Offploy exists because people with convictions deserve a genuine second chance, and because employers, advisors and support workers need better tools to make that happen. An award like this is a welcome, independent signal that the R3 Certificate is achieving what it set out to do: giving frontline advisors real, practical skills rather than a box-ticking course.

“We continue to be grateful to the Princess Royal Training Awards and the City & Guilds Foundation for recognising the impact that people with convictions can have on society.

- Jacob Hill, Founder and Managing Director, Offploy

What’s next

Our Award will be formally presented at a ceremony in London on Tuesday 26 January 2027, alongside this year’s other recipients, and we’ll be able to display the Princess Royal Training Awards Quality Mark on our website and materials for the next three years.

For now, we’re taking a moment to say thank you: to the City & Guilds Foundation and the assessors who gave their time to understand our work properly, and to every colleague across Offploy who has built, delivered and improved the R3 Certificate since it began.

Want to upskill your own team?

If you’re a frontline advisor supporting socially excluded people and want to upskill in how best to support people with convictions, we have a whole host of free information and resources on DisclosureToolkit.org