Businesses unite for a better Brighton & Hove

How can we make Brighton better for business?

This was the question posed to a room of some of Brighton’s brightest business owners, as we gathered at the Montefiore hospital for the launch of the Chamber Political and Economic Influence Group.

The discussion, facilitated by Julia Chanteray, the Chamber President, focused around key areas that we hope to change, or challenges we need to overcome in order to further develop the business economy in Brighton. 

The aim, over the next few weeks, is to compile the most popular points into a sort of manifesto, or ‘business plan’, with actions we can work on going forward. 

Fuelled by some stunning canapes and a few glasses of vino, we took pen to post-it note and scribbled out our twenty top desires for things we’d like to change in Brighton. The responses, written on pink post-its that covered every wall in the conference room, ranged from ‘legalise weed’ to ‘we need a park and ride’. A four day week was also discussed, alongside better business support.

Next these points were separated into groups - transport, infrastructure, public space, business support, local action, universities, communication and random. The most popular, unsurprisingly, were transport and infrastructure. But there were several contradictions - some people want more buses, others less. A tram and monorail were also thrown in for good measure. 

Everyone agreed that our proposal, whatever form it should take, must be trackable and democratic. It was suggested we use a digital tool, such as Survey Monkey, to track the opinions of all Chamber members by asking you to rate each point from 1-10, depending on how it affects your business.

We got into groups and established which three areas were most important to us. Then looked at which we cared most about and could help with on an individual level.

If all Chamber members, passionate about change, team together, we will have a formidable force, which will go someway to quashing concerns over the actionability of a council already over-prescribed. The group decided we will go as far as we can on our own and lobby on behalf of the Chamber. 

The session ended with a buzz of excitement over the realisation that we can actually engineer change in the city, if we work together. Next we will discuss the key points that will go in the manifesto and, most importantly, how we’re going to turn them into actions. 

Blog written by Sophie Turton, assistant editor at Crunch. 

To find out more, please contact Grace Evans, office@businessinbrighton.org.uk. 

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk