Alistair Darling bowed to pressure last night and cut the planned 5 per cent rise in business rates that was threatening to cripple many small firms.

In a last-minute reprieve, the Chancellor said that the rate rise, which applies only in England at present, would be scaled back to 2 per cent this year, and that businesses could spread payments of the remaining 3 per cent increase between 2010 and 2012.

Read the full report in The Times here

The Marlow Chamber held its March business meeting at the offices of B. Legal – Solicitors in Globe Park on Monday.

 The meeting began with a presentation from Nicola Chard of B. legal who gave an outline of the business. Interestingly the company is run by nearly all ladies – only one gentleman!

 This was followed by a presentation from Kathyn Tinsley of Karoma situated in Station road, Marlow  – a beauty therapist who uses only natural ingredients and gives plenty of time for each client.

The President , Andy McCready, then introduced Peter Stagg who is a web site designer – Midnight-online.  Peter had been working, with Chamber Executive members, to create a new web site for the Marlow Chamber and this was launched at the meeting. Peter demonstrated the workings of the web site to the attendees.  It was well received by everyone who agreed that it was an excellent web site and would be a great asset to the Chamber members. They  would be able to use it to contact other members and also promote any offers they were running at particular time.

I am delighted to launch the first of the Chamber’s monthly newsletters.

It has been a busy year for the Chamber so far, we continue to work closely with the local and district councils on matters such as planning, parking and transportation, all of which are important to the businesses in the town. In these tough economic times, the Chamber has been proactively working with businesses to try and increase trade, we organised a meeting with the retailers of the town back in January to discuss ways to increase the footfall and spend in the town and a number of the ideas generated are now being actioned or at least researched – we hope to continue and further develop our partnership with the retailers in the town.

This month we also arranged a meeting to support businesses in the town on their rate reviews by bringing a specialist in from Bolton Birch Chartered Surveyors to advise businesses on their right of appeal, small business rate relief, rates revaluation together with the methods of valuation. The information was well received by those who attended. These events are on and above our well attended monthly business meetings which will continue to be held on the third Monday of the month at a venue near you – should you wish to host a business meeting please contact me.

The new Chamber website was launched last week to enhance the objectives of the Chamber to provide information to businesses, a forum for businesses to promote themselves and enable members to benefit from member to member offers. I would particularly like to thank Peter Stagg of Midnight-online in his hard work in making this happen.

Please feel free to look around the website.  Your contribution to the site will help make it successful.

I hope you enjoy our newsletter and look forward to seeing you at future business meetings. 

Andy McCready
amicitia