I am very pleased and excited to announce that I have joined the board of directors at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
I have been involved with the Chamber movement for almost 25 years now – with the past 11 years spent at Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce.
The time has whizzed by and I have enjoyed every minute, learning so much about an area I knew little about and working with amazing people who run and work in incredible businesses. My highlights stretch from tasting my first cheese oatcake up to winning the BCC Chamber of The Year Award in 2021.
I would never have imagined just what an adventure I was embarking on when I started working at Liverpool Chamber of Commerce back in the late 1990s in the early days of the Blair government.
I have witnessed the highs and lows of economic ‘boom and bust’ and I have seen business support from the government come and go. Who remembers Business Link and the TECs, latterly the Learning and Skills Council? They came and they went whilst Chambers of Commerce carried on doing what they do best, representing local business at the highest level, giving advice and guidance, providing a network and various forum for all types and sizes of business, and offering services and skills training for continuous business improvement.
Staffordshire is one of 53 Accredited Chambers which make up our UK network. They are all trusted champions of businesses, places, and global trade. Together, representing tens of thousands of businesses of all shapes and sizes, which employ around six million people across the UK.
The BCC also has a powerful international network with over 130 British Chambers of Commerce and business groups located in every continent of the world and directly linked to UK-based Chambers of Commerce.
As a newly elected board member I will have the great privilege and honour to work alongside the newly elected BCC president, Baroness Martha Lane-Fox CBE.
Baroness Lane-Fox co-founded Europe’s largest travel and leisure website, lastminute.com in 1998. She is a passionate internet activist and was a Digital Champion for the UK from 2009-2013, helping to create the Government Digital Service. She is a director of Twitter and chair of WeTransfer, and she co-founded and chairs LuckyVoice, which has revolutionised the karaoke industry. She is the Chancellor of the Open University and was also made a crossbench peer in the House of Lords in 2013.
Having founded and run her own businesses, she knows first-hand the challenges firms are up against right now. And it is because Chambers provide invaluable support to ensure businesses can expand, invest and trade, that I believe she will lead a board committed to business survival and growth in such challenging times.
Baroness Lane-Fox, who is President for the next two years has commented that she is: “Very excited to be joining the BCC family and looking forward to meeting with Chambers and hearing from businesses across the UK.”
I will certainly be taking her up on this and inviting Baroness Lane-Fox to Staffordshire to meet and address local businesspeople as soon as possible and using the connections that the BCC Board will give me to further promote the interests of Staffordshire businesses – and introducing them to the addictive Staffordshire oatcakes.
If you want to talk to us about any business issues, including funding, you can call our switchboard on 01782 202222 or call the Stoke and Staffs Growth Hub Helpline on 0300 111 8002 or email: info@staffordshirechambers.co.uk
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