A voice for Stroud
When a whole town’s business community seems to think the same thing – that it needs a voice in the corridors of power – you would be forgiven for thinking a fight is in the offing. Which brings us to Stroud and its district– those glorious five valleys. But in those valleys, the drums being beaten by Stroud’s business community are not the drums of war – and they are uniting more and more to fly the district’s colours.
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“Our aim is to pull people together. That is not difficult,” said Steven Dechan, who heads up the new Stroud Voice business group. “Our launch event had about 60 people at it.” That was backed by the mighty Business West and orchestrated by its county ‘face’, Ian Mean.
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Steven Dechan
“We have got maybe 100 members in our Linked- in group, but expect that to rise to about 300 members quickly.We are ambitious.” Why it feels the need to be heard is simple. “You have GFirst LEP (local enterprise partnership), its construction and infrastructure committee. They have some really good people. But there is no one from Stroud, no one from the district council. “The LEP will say ‘every time we go to Stroud we don’t know who to speak to’. That is why we have to put our hands up,” said Mr Dechan, whose tone is conciliatory. The boss of international business Platform-14, a distributor of medical devices, has a way of talking, which is likely to open doors and build bridges while calmly raising the issues to hand. “We are not a networking group,” he added, of Stroud Voice. “That will be a benefit of what we are trying to achieve, but the idea is to give the district a voice and make sure it is factored into the decision-making processes or it will miss out. “If we don’t do something now, it will be too late” l
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February 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com | 31
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