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Shake-up at the Chamber
SOUTH Yorkshire's Chambers of Commerce are changing the way they provide support to businesses across the region.
The three Chambers - Sheffield, Barnsley and Rotherham, and Doncaster - are bringing together jointly their activities such as enterprise, training, human resources, international trade and events.
Individual Chambers will continue to represent the views of their separate memberships at local, regional and national level, but plan to set up a series of joint forums covering different business sectors.
Closer cooperation on policy and representation activities could follow, but there are no plans for a full scale merger of the Chambers' activities - or for job cuts.
Chambers say the new initiative is being launched in response to a joint business and public sector bid to make the Sheffield City Region one of the first in the country to set up a Local Enterprise Partnership.
LEPs are a Coalition Government initiative that will take over spearheading economic growth, following the demise of regional development agencies like Yorkshire Forward.
Instead of being geographically-based, LEPs will focus on economic areas which - in the case of the Sheffield City Region - would span the whole of South Yorkshire, North Derbyshire and North Nottinghamshire.
The Government is also planning to take over running regional services like the Business Link business support organisation and international trade support services.
But that has caused concern among some business leaders who want those services delivered locally - and the new Chambers' joint venture would be in an ideal position to do that.
The proposals to combine business support activities have been drawn up by a working party made up of Chamber presidents and senior executives.
Talks have also taken place with Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce, which could lead to closer co-operation if the Sheffield City Region gets the Government go-ahead to set up one of the country's first LEPs.
Former Sheffield Chamber president Richard Wright said the new joint venture is likely to create jobs if it wins new contracts to deliver business support services.
And Nick Tovey, president of Sheffield Chamber, said: "We believe the new jointly owned company would become the vehicle of choice for national and local government to access the business community."
South Yorkshire's three Chambers have 4,700 members, who employ 157,000 people across South Yorkshire.
The region's economy is worth 25 billion, a third of which is generated within Sheffield.
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Weather for Sheffield
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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