Dragon’s Den investor Deborah Meaden, pictured, paid her first visit to the llkley Brewery as its mentor.

The business saw off competition from 3,100 other businesses and was crowned the national winner of the Local Business Accelerators Scheme in June.

As part of their prize they won 12 months mentoring by Mrs Meaden and this recent visit marked her first official tour of the business.

Chris Ives, one of Ilkley Brewery’s directors said: “This was her first visit to the brewery, we gave her a tour and we introduced her to our beers. We also had a meeting about what we wanted to achieve and she listened to us and we found her comments extremely useful.

“She focussed on how we could grow the business further afield.”

The scheme was organised by the Newspaper Society and fronted by Mrs Meaden, and backed by Prime Minister David Cameron, Business Secretary Vince Cable, and CBI Director General John Cridland.

The next step for the brewery is to put some of her ideas into practice.