Leicester chairman Aiyawatt, late father Vichai handed English city’s highest honour
Leicester City Football Club will be awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City following a vote by local councillors last week.
The award is the highest civic honour the council can grant and recognises the contribution that the Foxes have made to the city of Leicester, said city authorities.
The club has been hailed for its community work in Leicester, which is located 160 kilometres north of London in the Midlands region. The Foxes shocked the world in 2016 when they beat odds of 5,000-1 to win the English Premier League and put Leicester on the world football map.
The city’s councillors also gave their unanimous backing to the introduction of a new civic honour – The City of Leicester Award – with the first recipients being Foxes chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanapraba and his late father Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
The award will recognise individuals whose outstanding achievements have had a positive and wide-reaching impact on Leicester, and also who have been a source of inspiration to its residents, said the council.
"It gives me and my family incredible pride to accept these wonderful honours,” Aiyawatt said.
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"The city of Leicester has given so much to us and we remain determined to place ourselves at the heart of this fantastic community by giving back all we can to the people who have made us feel at home from the moment we arrived.”
The club’s charity was renamed the Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Foundation following the chairman’s death – along with staff members Kaveporn Punpare and Nusara Suknamai and pilots Eric Swaffer and Izabela Rosa Lechowicz – in a helicopter crash at Leicester’s King Power Stadium in 2018.
The awards were approved in a vote by city councillors last Wednesday.
