A FATHER who lost two teenage daughters in the Hillsborough disaster 25 years ago, has been awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List.

Trevor Hicks, who lives in Giggleswick, is founder and president of the Hillsborough Family Support Group.

The honour comes for his tireless work since the disaster, in April 1989, to uncover who was responsible for the deaths of 96 people, including his two daughters, Sarah, who was 19, and Victoria, 15.

Both girls were crushed to death in the Sheffield Wednesday ground where they had gone to watch Liverpool play Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final.

Mr Hicks, who runs England Worthside, a Keighey-based company providing parts for beer hand pumps, and the girls' mother Jenny - the couple are separated - were also in the ground, but escaped injury.

He has been in the vanguard of the campaign to get justice for the victims since the tragedy and at the forefront of the battle to secure a new hearing.

It was granted two years ago following the quashing of the original findings into the events on April 15. It has been running since last March.

Mr Hicks said: "Awarding the honour of a CBE shows how much tide of opinion has changed and is further acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past and the 25 years hard work we have all had putting things right.

"I hope that people will understand that I have mixed feelings - extremely proud both on a personal level and for the HFSG, its former and present officers and all the families.

"Yet a degree of humility as I was only doing what anyone would do in the circumstances that I found myself thrust into."

He anticipated that the new hearing was unlikely to be completed until 2016 and that the re-sitting of the inquest into his two daughters could be in the early spring.