A new stage is set to give voice to Gloucestershire’s business community
What does Gloucestershire’s business community think about anything? Who are its decision makers, experts, leaders, thinkers? What is its economic strategy? This new space will help you find out...
Dear readers,
I hope you had a great week.
Today we lead on a special story for us here at The Raikes Journal, the announcement of a series of events we hope will help create a new voice for the Gloucestershire business community and all those connected to it.
If you are a business, a leader of an organisation who has something to say, who wants to be heard, if there is something you want the county to talk about, something you want challenged, debated, discussed, then we hope you will welcome what we have to say below.
Please do feel free to get in touch and ask more.
Have a great weekend.
Very best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
For every person you refer to The Raikes Journal’s email service you get points towards a free membership allowing you to see beyond our paywalls. Please do sign up (free or otherwise), send the referral link to a friend or colleague, and help us grow.
Expert insight: You don’t know what you don’t know!
Not knowing how the numbers can be used to make a business work better is possibly the biggest thing business owners didn’t know that they should know. Shaun Peglar, of Randall & Payne, explains.
One of the huge pluses of being supported by a firm like Randall & Payne is it gives us access to its library of expert articles. Here’s an introduction to one of the latest from Shaun Peglar, a partner with the firm, who riffs off the old adage, that ‘there are things we don’t know we don’t know’. “This classic quote describes how prospects can feel when I run through a list of questions in order to understand their business and their aspirations for the future,” writes Peglar. “Not knowing how the numbers can be used to make your business work better is possibly the biggest thing they didn’t know that they should know. Your accountant is/should be your trusted advisor with the expert advice and experience to ask the right questions to benefit your business.”
Read the full article here.
Briefing notes…
🏘️🏘️🏘️🏘️🏘️ There are fears a Cotswold village will be absorbed by a nearby town as plans for 280 homes have been given the go-ahead. Robert Hitchins Ltd has been granted outline permission to develop more than 33 acres of agricultural fields on the edge of Cirencester. More here.
⚽ Upgrades for a Cheltenham football club and a new community sports hub are step closer to becoming a reality. The proposed Petersfield Community and Sports Hub can now a go ahead as Cheltenham Borough Council chiefs have approved more than £500,000 for the Petersfield Park scheme. More here.
🎪 The removal of the controversial white ‘tents’ outside Julian Dunkerton’s 131 Promenade has been welcomed by a Cheltenham conservation group. Plans to replace the temporary marquees, which have been in situ since the coronavirus pandemic, with a metal pergola with a retractable roof was approved in January this year. More here.
🏘️ “Bad” plans to legalise homes which were built without proper planning permission in a Gloucestershire village and change some from social housing to discounted market properties have been given the go-ahead. Housing developers BDLM Limited have been granted retrospective permission for a pair of semi-detached homes on a plot in Redmarley. More here.
Diary dates…
Friday…
🎵 The Tux Fizz Xperience will bring the music of Prince, Tina Turner, Queen, Adele, Whitney Houston, Elton John, R.E.M, Michael Jackson and many more to life this evening at the Everyman, Cheltenham, from 7.30pm. More here.
Saturday…
🎵 The Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury is due to stage Going to a Go Go - The Mod Show, bringing you a host of mod, soul, rocksteady, and two tone music. From 7.30pm. More here.
Sunday…
💐🌳 Described as one of Gloucestershire’s ‘hidden gems’, Highnam Court, built in 1658 and steeped in history, is opening the gates to its gardens today from 11am to 5pm, in aid of the Cobalt Appeal Fund (which provides diagnostic imaging equipment for the county). More here.
The power of developing real financial leadership
The official launch of a book aimed at helping business people run their companies even better - written by experts from Gloucestershire - is fast-approaching. This is an event due to take place at Gloucester Rugby Club on Monday, June 16, where authors Stewart Barnes and Malcolm Prowle will discuss the findings of their research, and the thrust of the ideas within the book, in front of an audience of 100-plus businesspeople. Dr Barnes is best known to many as the founder and ceo of leadership development specialists QuoLux (one of the firm’s we are very proud to say sponsors The Raikes Journal) and Prowle as professor of performance management, business, computing and social sciences at the University of Gloucestershire. We’ll bring you a full report on its all after Monday’s event. Developing Financial Leadership in Small-Medium Businesses, looks at the importance of good financial leadership in decision making, with insights that will help transform how owners, directors and senior leaders approach financial leadership. Get your copy here.
* The Raikes Journal is a digital magazine and community interest company whose supporters believe, like us, that journalism about Gloucestershire is worth keeping alive. Everything you read here - original stories about our county - is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne; our sponsors, Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We’re dedicated to championing the county, its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to creating an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you’ll be able to see past the paywalls often put on our 2cnd and 3rd email editions of the week, that lock our archive after two weeks and our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You’ll be able to comment on our stories too.
You can sign up for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. Or go all in and become one of our Founding Partners or Founding Members!
The stage is set to give voice to Gloucestershire’s business community
What does Gloucestershire’s business community think about anything? Who are its decision-makers, experts, leaders, thinkers? What is the county’s economic strategy? This new space will help you find out…
Today we are thrilled to launch a new venture to help answer all those questions posed above and more - to put the names and faces of the movers and shakers of Gloucestershire in front of you; to give businesses a voice so we can all better understand our county.
In partnership with social media and events experts Social and Social, The Raikes Journal is creating a brand new space - an independent, live platform to give voice to the county’s business community.
When this digital magazine and email service first set sail 18 months ago it was encouraged into the water by businesspeople who told us ‘the county needs a credible platform for our stories and our news. The county needs you’.
All very flattering, but our case was strengthened by the demise of local media generally, the rapid disappearance of any platform that was editorially and journalistically-led and with it any such stage from which businesses could be heard.
And there was a sense too that with the end of the powerful independent business group GFirst LEP, for so long the voice that gave Gloucestershire direction and purpose, a leadership vacuum had been left.
So much good work continues to be done, but does anyone really know what it is? It might be posted in short-form on social media, which at least raises its profile, but the detail can be swept away in the torrent of other posts like so many messages in bottles.
Now, after 18 months building Raikes into a platform that puts the business community front and centre with original stories, we can unveil plans to put the leaders of those businesses centre stage too - literally.
Nicole Archer, founder and director of Social and Social, said: “We are unveiling a new series of events to create a space to amplify the voices of the business community, and to discover the next generation of ‘leaders’ for the county.
“It’s about giving voice to the Gloucestershire business community and all those connected to it, including education and training providers, local authorities, charities and more.
“It will be a space in which those in the know can discuss and even interrogate some of the biggest projects taking place in the county, give air-time to the challenges being faced by businesses and the efforts being made to overcome and triumph.
“We want the opinions and observations coming out of the forums to help create a true picture of Gloucestershire, to better inform everyone about the brilliant businesses we have here, and what we need to make sure it continues.
“We want to help create a vibrant, dynamic community that works together to drive the county forward.
“To do that, we’re beginning with a series of roundtables chaired by and featuring some brilliant business people - some of whom you will have heard of, some not.
“We’re creating a brand new space, and we’re calling that space The Gloucestershire Thinkery.”
Andrew Merrell, editor and founder of The Raikes Journal, said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Nicole and the team at Social & Social and really looking forward to co-hosting and writing about and amplifying what goes on inside The Thinkery.
“I’ve been reporting on the county for over a quarter of a century now and I believe we are entering a critical time.
“It feels like Gloucestershire has so much going for it, but no clear voice of leadership. And leadership seems more crucial than ever.
“We can’t put anyone in place to be that leader, but maybe we can help create a powerful enough voice to cut through instead - a voice that will let people know what kind if place Gloucestershire really is; a dynamic space that will help keep everyone working together.”
Merrell added: “The local enterprise partnership, GFirst LEP (that folded into the county council in April last year) united and spoke up for county businesses for so long, did such good work and gave it a sense of direction and purpose.
“It is optimistic to assume that kind of cohesion and momentum will remain in place on its own. It was hard-won and it would be a shame to see it erode.
“The expertise is still there. We want to create an independent space to allow that leadership and clever thinking to come through again and to be heard.
“We also want to discover new, relevant voices, to discuss the challenges facing businesses now, to showcase some of the brilliant experts we have here in Gloucestershire, to deliver real insight and feedback for some of our political leaders.
“Of course, we also had the culling of the Western Gateway and we have the ominous presence of devolution pending for our local authorities.
“If the early political exchanges are anything to go by the reorganisation of our local government threatens to park the county for years to come and that would be a tragedy.
“How better to protect the work done to establish Gloucestershire as a dynamic place to invest and do business than to create a stage on which the business community and all who care about it can be heard and then report on it.
“With Social and Social’s expertise at hosting events and ours in reporting on them, plus the platform we’re developing here in The Raikes Journal, we hope to achieve all of that. It’s ambitious, and that’s what makes it feel right.”
If you want to be involved, if you care about the county, if you want to support what we’re trying to do, have something you want to talk about, something you want to interrogate, an issue you want to debate about Gloucestershire, to better inform our business community, our electorate, your customers, all of us, then we want to hear from you to help set the agenda.
The first three events are already taking shape, and more details will follow.
To find out more email Nicole Archer at Social and Social.