Thorns Group has climbed into the top 50 of the fastest growing inner city businesses in the United Kingdom.

Last year Thorns Group’s bosses celebrated their first ranking position in the prestigious Inner City 100 index that charts the success of inner city companies. But in this year’s league table the company has soared from 81st to 45th position after seeing growth of 378 per cent between 1998 and 2002.

Thorns Group – leading single source suppliers of services and equipment to the events, exhibitions and conference sectors – has been hailed as one of London’s elite businesses. The New Economics Foundation, one of Britain’s most creative and effective independent think tanks and compilers of the annual Inner City 100 Business Index, says many of the nation’s most exciting success stories are unfolding in some of the country’s poorest areas.

The London borough of Haringey – home to Tottenham-based Thorns Group for the past 50 years – has the United Kingdom’s worst unemployment record. In 2002, when fast-expanding Thorns needed to move to a bigger site, the company remained loyal to the local community from where it draws most its 110-strong workforce and relocated to premises just a mile down the road.

Thorns Group Managing Director Graham Langley-Jones joined entrepreneurs from across the UK at an awards dinner in London on Tuesday, December 2, where the Index was announced in front of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown who delivered a keynote speech. The awards evening was the pinnacle of two days of high-level policy and networking events.

The New Economics Foundation says the Inner City 100 firms demonstrate clearly that fast growth and profitability are highly compatible with social and environmental concerns. They “engage” with their communities, employ local workforces and source supplies locally.

Sarah Foster, Director of the Enterprising Communities Programme at NEF, said: “Competing with the best, the Inner City 100 are well-managed, innovative companies that compare favourably not only with their inner city peers but the best companies in the country.”

Graham Langley-Jones said: “We were delighted our efforts were formally recognised last year by inclusion in the Inner City 100 and our dramatic rise into the top 50 in the 2003 rankings demonstrates how Thorns Group has developed and expanded during this period. People within our own industry are aware of how successful we have been but through the Inner City 100 our success story is reaching a far wider audience across a host of different industries.

“I am also extremely pleased that our important contribution to the local community is being recognised and I hope this will encourage other businesses to come to Haringey and help the borough prosper.”

Thorns Group’s achievements also earned it front-page coverage in Growing Business magazine, the official magazine media partner of the Inner City 100 awards.

Four divisions operate from Thorns Group’s headquarters at Brantwood Road, Tottenham – Thorns Furniture and Catering Hire; Camden Exhibition Services; Camden Special Events and Classic Technical Services.

Thorns Group, which also has regional premises in Manchester and Birmingham, stocks more than a million items of furniture and catering equipment, including tables, chairs, china, cutlery, silverware, glassware, linen and bespoke furnishings plus floral displays, carpeting, plasma screens, electrical fittings and exhibition shell schemes.