It’s been a busy few months at the Chamber with visits from the Deputy Prime Minister, awards deadlines and lots of summer corporate events going on alongside the biggest sporting events of the year!

So the nominations deadline for the Chamber Community Business Awards has now passed and we will soon be in touch with all the finalists to invite them to our awards evening at St Albans Cathedral on September 25. Truly exciting times ahead for lots of people in our business community!

We are quite overwhelmed by the quality of some of the entries received this year, it seems to get more and more impressive each year that we do this – proof that St Albans really is a great place to be! We really are #superstalbans

This week we heard from the City Centre Partnership at our business breakfast meeting at Cote Brasserie in St Albans. 80 delegates attended and enjoyed a delicious breakfast as this very popular restaurant to find out how they could be part of the future plans to build a lasting legacy for our city centre.

The aim in creating the City Centre Partnership, a business-led partnership of the private and public sector within the city is to create vibrant, thriving city centre. It will actively encourage St Albans to become a beacon for excellence, range and distinctiveness, to attract investment and facilitate growth, benefiting businesses, residents and visitors alike.

St Albans is perfectly positioned to build on its strengths and take advantage of the diverse commercial opportunities offered by the changing face of the city centre. The City Centre Partnership has been formed to ensure that St Albans builds on its strengths and rises to the challenges it faces now and in the future.

Alastair Woodgate (Rumball Sedgwick), Richard Cohen (Eternity Jewellers), Phil Corrigan (The Maltings Shopping Centre) and other CCP board members informed our guests about this new initiative, including the appointment of a City Centre Manager and the plan to achieve Business Improvement District status within three years. They suggested how local businesses can play a valuable role in making St Albans city centre economically prosperous, dynamic and forward-looking for growth, whilst highlighting its unique character.

Your ideas and your support are needed for this great initiative. We all want to make St Albans and its district a great place to work, shop and live: your involvement will help ensure that ideas and aims can become reality. Please contact the Chamber office by email if you have any thoughts or ideas to be passed forward.

The Chamber is here so that business people have a voice – we listen to you and feedback your issues and ideas helping when we can with any concerns you may have that affect the economic stability and growth in the district. This is why we work closely with STANTA (St Albans Enterprise Agency) and St Albans District Council. We like to share good practice and offer advice to help businesses flourish in the area.

We have a break from networking during August but have some great events lined up in for the autumn starting with a networking lunch on Wednesday September 3 with Ed Vaizey MP (Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries) at Porters Park Golf Club. This promises to be a great event for all marketing, communications and PR companies and also anyone working in theatre and entertainment industries. Book early to avoid disappointment!