In his latest Post column, Chief executive of Dunbartonshire Chamber of Commerce Damon Scott shares his thoughts connecting local businesses

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Last month the Chamber teamed up with Dumbarton FC and Rock You Events to launch the first of the new Loves Local Business Clubs in Dumbarton.

More than 40 businesses came together to connect, build relationships and support each other.

Bringing our network of businesses together is a key role of the Chamber and we work hard to continue to build a strong, connected business community – particularly at such a difficult time. The larger and more connected our network, the more effective and impactful we can become.

Partnerships are incredibly important to the Chamber, and we are delighted to have developed really positive collaborations, not only with Dumbarton FC, but with West Dunbartonshire Council, Developing Young Workforce, Lomond Radio and others.

We will be building our partnership working with a series of events and collaborations to reach out to a much wider audience and are currently developing a “Growth Academy” with a month-long programme of webinars, forums and workshops scheduled for the new year.

In the meantime, we have a number of events coming up, including the next Dumbarton Loves Local Business Club on Thursday, October 27, our next Business Breakfast Club on Wednesday, November 9 and our fabulous three-course Christmas Lunch on Friday, December 9 at the Golden Jubilee Hotel in Clydebank.

We are delighted to confirm one of Scotland’s foremost business leaders, Charandeep Singh – deputy chief executive at Scottish Chambers of Commerce, will be our special guest speaker at the three-course festive lunch and that we still have availability for ALL businesses (members or non-members) or individuals to join us at this popular event.

The Chamber already offers some fantastic support for business with access to the British Chamber’s legal, HR, health and safety and tax helplines and hundreds of online documents, policies and procedures – as well as a great value health plan.

This is another area we are planning to build upon to offer a range of choice-based benefits including direct support for businesses to help them develop and grow as well as a range of practical and training to ensure they are compliant.

We are aware that the vast majority of our local enterprises are micro businesses such as sole traders or small partnerships and often in the trades and service sector – along with the existing benefits, our new health and safety partnerships are being designed to help meet the wide-ranging needs of these businesses from first aid at work, fire safety awareness through to manual handling.