In the run-up to the recent general election, there was much debate among the main political parties about how they would revitalise the UK’s economy.

Now the election is over the hard work starts and, along with other members of the British Chambers of Commerce’s accredited network, we are calling on the new Labour Government to prioritise plans to close the skills gap, grow exports, boost productivity and create a long-term coherent industrial strategy.

We know that members are also keen to see rapid movement on pledges around business rates reform and improvements to the UK’s trade relationship with the EU.

These things will not be easy to accomplish but politicians must work hard to achieve them as they will help our businesses to succeed, which will in turn enable our communities to prosper, our economy to grow and will create wealth that will help to fund our public services.

In the days following the election, we invited all our county’s 12 newly elected MPs, including Welwyn Hatfield’s new Labour MP Andrew Lewin, to meet our chamber’s expert team.

With around 1,000 member businesses belonging to our chamber, we see first hand every day the hugely vital contribution that small and medium-sized businesses make to our economy, but we are also acutely aware of the challenges they are currently facing.

We are primed to have meaningful conversations with our new MPs about these challenges and explore how we can work together, with the support of our vibrant business community, to overcome these obstacles and help drive forward our county’s economic success.

We want to develop strong relationships with our MPs over the coming weeks and months because collaboration between Government and the business community is essential to achieving our mutual goals of prosperity and development.

Having recently been promoted from managing director to CEO of Hertfordshire’s leading business support organisation I promise that our chamber will champion the needs of our businesses to our county’s MPs and will urge them to put business interests high on their agendas during the new Parliament.

This needs to happen because even though the lockdowns are a few years behind us we know there is still a long way to go to get us back to where we should be.

As our chamber celebrates 100 years of supporting Hertfordshire businesses, we promise that we will continue to help them prosper and thrive by helping them to grow their profile and connect with other businesses locally, nationally and globally through a range of membership benefits including our excellent international trade programme and wide-ranging networking and training opportunities.

See hertschamber.com to find out more.