What is a Chamber of Commerce?

You may have heard of Chambers of Commerce, or Chambers of Trade, but perhaps don?t really know what we do. Our primarily function is to represent the interests of members in all fields, be it lobbying or working in partnership. The bigger Chambers of Commerce have premises and paid employees, often offering advice and services like export documentation. Alton Chamber of Commerce is run by volunteers and only the Secretary receives a small honorarium. Thus, with smaller resources, we concentrate on local issues and local initiatives.As our motto says, we are ?The Voice of Alton Business?. We all know that it can be difficult to get concerns heard or ideas acted upon when working as an individual. The idea of a Chamber of Commerce is to be able to add weight to what our members tell us so that things get done. We also have a wider remit to do what we can to help with improving and developing the local economy.

What does the Chamber do?

In order to serve the business community of Alton and the surrounding district, we have a number of distinct areas of activity. These are:

Lobbying & Partnerships
A lot of our time is taken up with attending meetings with all relevant agencies and bodies. Where appropriate, we are keen to work with organisations where our goals are shared. This leads us to work with councils; mainly Alton Town Council (ATC) and East Hampshire District Council (EHDC). We also part of Alton Initiatives Management Ltd. (AIM) and Alton Town Partnership Ltd. (ATP), in all cases participating with the object of both contributing and lobbying. We have built-up a good working relationship with a number of officers at EHDC, allowing the spirit of cooperation to do good for both our organisations. We are not afraid to raise issues where needed, using the local press and other means to bring things into the spotlight.

Events & Activities
In order to encourage members to network, socialise and build long-term business relations, we run monthly events for members. These are held at various venues, offering a range of interesting subjects including the chance to visit local businesses. Although we aim to hold these on the forth Thursday evening of the month, we do vary from this date and times on occasion. Although our events are focussed on members, they are open to all business people. You can read about our events on the ?Events? page.Outside of the Chamber, we keen on public events that help the local economy. To this end, we take an active role in Alton Initiatives Management Ltd. (AIM). This is ?not-for-profit? organisation that is a partnership between Alton Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Alton Town Council and East Hampshire District Council. Its primary object is to improve and develop the economy of the town centre. This is done by employing a ?Town Initiatives Manager? to run a series of town centre events throughout the year. You can find out about these from www.altonevents.co.uk ? this a website that lists all of Alton?s events.Alton Chamber of Commerce has more recently taken to running its own public events. These are the ?Jane Austen Regency Week? and the ?Alton Word Fest?. Alton has traditionally made little or nothing of its connection with Jane Austen, so we started a week-long ?event? that is made up of a series of individual events. The Word Fest started in 2008 after a local bookshop owner suggested that Alton should have a book festival. Both events are gradually growing and each have their own websites:
Jane Austen Regency Week: www.janeaustenregencyweek.co.uk
Alton Word Fest: www.altonwordfest.org.ukWe also help with the planning and stewarding of the Yuletide Festival and the Pancake Race. The Yuletide Festival is growing each year, along with many of the other town-centre events, meaning that people are coming from far and wide to visit Alton?s events.

Promotion
We have recognised that Alton does not have a lot of promotional goods available, especially in relation to Jane Austen. We currently produce the free ?Jane Austen Trail? leaflet that guides people from Chawton to Alton on foot, showing them buildings that are relevant to Jane Austen?s life. We have used the pictures from this to produce two separate Alton and Chawton Jane Austen postcards.For a number of years we have produced a calendar for our members. This is now on sale in Alton each year, along with some Christmas cards. We have just produced an Accommodation leaflet that can be sent out to people or displayed in the area to promote our local B&Bs and Hotels. It is very likely that all these ranges of goods and leaflets will continue to grow, hopefully being available for sale on-line in the future.

Communications
Aside from promoting Alton, we are here to keep local businesses informed. We do this through our newsletter which is sent out to members by E-mail, but is available to all on this website. We also use the press to tell people about local issues and achievements.This website is an on-going project that forms part of our communications, allowing us to address a wide range of people interested in Alton. Both AIM and Alton Town Partnership are involved in a project to provide an ?umbrella? website for Alton. This will offer people from all walks of life a much greater range of information that Alton Chamber can contribute to, along with every other organisation in the area. The idea is that it will be a ?one-stop-shop? for people looking for information about Alton. We are not sure how it will all work at the moment, but you can be sure that we will play our part to make sure that it lives up to everyone?s expectations.

ShopWatch Radio
This was an initiative started in cooperation with the Police. This idea is for shops in Alton to be able to talk directly to the Police station and to each other, allowing for quick response times and for criminals to be tracked as they progress through the town. Alton Chamber of Commerce are the current licence-holder and have plans to make more of the scheme to encourage its use. We are planning a special page on our website just for ShopWatch radio.

Awards
In 2005 we started an annual awards ceremony to allow the committee to acknowledge the achievements of local businesses. We have three medals for Innovation, Excellence and Growth which are awarded at the President?s Dinner the January after the year to which they apply. The recipients so far have been:

Year	Innovation	Excellence	Growth
2008	Ma Cuisine Pour Vous	Alton Craft Centre	-
2007	Lifelock Ltd	Alton Community Centre	Image Print 2001 Ltd
2006	Interiors by Elizabeth Claire	Alton Grange Hotel	Loadmasters Ltd
2005	Alton Sewing Centre	Format Milton Architects Ltd	Triple FFF Brewery Ltd

How is the Chamber run?

As we said earlier, Alton Chamber of Commerce & Industry is run by volunteers. They put a lot of time and effort into the work we do and we can only do things where people contribute their time. We are run by the members for the members and have a committee, a constitution and a bank account. We are a ?Constituted Association? and you can download our constitution at the bottom of this page.Our committee has four ?officers? (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer), as well as other ?ordinary? committee members. Many of these other committee members have titles and responsibilities, meaning that they all contribute to the operation and management of the Chamber. There is a list of committee members below.We hold an Annual General Meeting (AGM) each autumn, allowing members to vote for the committee members and to express their thoughts, ideas and concerns where appropriate. Naturally members are able to talk to committee members at other times, often informally at our monthly events. The newsletter is another means for members to communicate with other members, as well as a means for the committee to pass on information to the members.Alton Chamber of Commerce & Industry has a long history ? we have established that it was founded in 1909. Unfortunately we don?t know much more than this and it would make an interesting research project to find out more about our past activities. We have a ?gong? that the President wears that lists Past Presidents going back to 1966 and we have repeated the list below.

2008-09 Committee Members

Position		Name
Officers
President		David Gay (also Alton in Bloom)
Vice-President		Steve Dalley
Secretary		Stephen Lewis (also Webmaster)
Treasurer		Mike Baker
Members
Promotion & Events		Pat Lerew
Accommodation & Catering		David Levene
		Joan Mossop
Newsletter Editor		John Evans
Retail & New Members		Heather Andrews
Without Portfolio		Geoff Rushton