Lorraine Harrison

AGM 15 February 2007

Wed 28th Feb

This year has been all about raising the profile of the trade association and launching a new, modern image that will attract more businesses. To this end, we have a new Corporate Image and a new “all singing, all dancing” website.

We have also managed to secure a fortnightly column in both the local newspapers that enables us (actually me) to keep the local community in touch with what we are doing and our thoughts and concerns.

Thus far, this has been extremely successful and, quite frequently, I have people approach me to say how much they are enjoying the editorials and what a good job I’m doing. However, this is not about Lorraine Harrison and how often she appears in the papers or on the television. It is about the Trade Association of Newquay and, sad to say that, despite the best efforts of the Executive, we are not receiving the support that I believe we deserve.

It is down to very few to continue to carry the Trade Association forward and, try as we may, the membership is down and those of us that are on the Executive are struggling to ensure that we have the correct representation on the numerous committees upon which we sit.

By virtue of what the Trade Association is, every member of the Executive has a business to run and their time is, therefore, limited. Some of us also serve on numerous other committees that take time out of our busy schedules. We urgently need more Executive members so that the spread of duties will be thinner. We need to ensure that we go back to the situation where we have a Chairman, a Chairman elect and a Vice Chairman so that we don’t reach the situation again, where we don’t know if we will have a Chairman or not to take us through to future years. We also need to ensure that whoever takes the Chair has a good grounding on the Executive and has the knowledge and the ability to take us forward.

I am sad to say that, despite many reminders and the fact that, to date, it has been entirely free, very few businesses have entered their details onto the Business Directory on the website. There has also been very little interest shown in the Buying Group Incentive Scheme that was also launched at the same time as the website. I would like to see us go back to the heady days when the Buying Group was all powerful and working for the betterment of the membership and the town’s business community.

At this time of change for Newquay, it has never been more important for us to have a strong Trade Association, which translates into a strong voice for the business community of Newquay with the Town, Borough and County Councils, the Police and, in the future, other Chambers of Commerce. We are now fortunate enough to have a new Town Manager and I would like to take this opportunity of welcoming Guy Thomas and wish him all the very best in his new job and look forward to working with him over the coming months.

I tried, unsuccessfully, last year to galvanise the businesses of Newquay into action to try to get the National Companies that take huge profits from our town centre to support our trade association. You could almost hear the wet raspberry as my efforts fell on, not only deaf ears, but also into the joke section of those National Companies’ trade magazines.

I also tried, unsuccessfully once again, to get some action to try to stop the spurious food outlets on what has now become our town centre “summer fun fair” from taking huge profits at the cost of those businesses that pay business rates in the surrounding areas. Once again, wet raspberry time, so the likelihood is that the same will be happening again this year with Ice Cream vans taking all the business from the Ice Cream Kiosk that has been there for years, and the sandwich bars and cafes in the surrounding area being down on their takings at what should be their busiest time of the year.

We did, however, have some success with the 10% off day on 16 December and I am hopeful that this will be something that will be carried on for many years to come, together with late night shopping and huge amounts of support and sponsorship from the local Newspapers.

A fantastic piece of news this week is that our airport, which has been one of my main interests during this past year in the Chair, has secured a further £11m pounds worth of Objective One funding. You will remember that it secured £13m pounds last year from another source. Let’s hope that this hugely important asset will continue to go from strength to strength and become the catalyst for the success of businesses and the local community alike.

Thank you.

Lorraine Harrison