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