BICESTER Chamber of Commerce is the longest-standing organisation providing a voice for businesses of the town and surrounding villages.

The chamber has been and remains central to a number of strategic bodies that have an influence on the town and those businesses that operate within it. These include, but are not limited to:

Bicester Strategic Development Board, Cherwell Local Strategic Partnership, Bicester Vision and Traffic Advisory Committee.

Over the years the chamber has and continues to contribute to and comment on consultations run by local government and other locally influential bodies. Among these have been the Cherwell District Council Strategic Development Plan, the redevelopment of Market Square and scrutiny review of car parking policy/ tariff in the Cherwell district.

We have an active social media presence, with a Facebook page and a Twitter account which are both used to share information on events and offers being run by our members, local government activities and news – town, district and county council, local enterprise partnership events, changes in legislation, grant funding, networking and trade shows happening locally, Cherwell Business Awards and likelihood of disruption/changes to local travel – both road and rail.

The chamber has also historically provided community support including to local schools through careers events, supporting work experience placements and, in their early years, sponsorship of Radio Bicester.

The above is juts a taste of how the chamber has worked hard on behalf of the local business community for many, many years.

The frequency and intensity of the chamber’s activities naturally peak and trough due to its reliance solely on volunteers, who also have their own businesses to run.

In recent years the delivery of ‘physical’ events and activities has had to be stepped back due to the required time commitment to plan, organise and then deliver these, coupled with having fewer active members able spare the time to undertake such elements.

Instead the chamber have opted in favour of having a greater impact through participating in strategic areas with direct business impact and using virtual resources, such as social media, as described above. This of course has also included our regular columns here in the Bicester Advertiser.

You can find out more about the chamber via our bicesterchamber.co.uk and we welcome enquiries to join.