The Bath Business Partnership’s first dinner of 2017 welcomed the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe in the beautiful setting of the Gainsborough Hotel in Bath.
The event was sponsored by the Gainsborough, and their Chairman, Colin Skellett, welcomed diners to the excellent four course dinner.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe was previously Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
She has previously served on the Boards of Tesco Plc, ITV, PwC and Metro AG as well as being Chairman of Dobbies Garden Centres Plc. Her early career featured time as a civil servant in the Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Policy Unit and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
The Baroness spoke extensively of her illustrious career and the challenges and opportunities of Brexit to business.
Ben Howlett, Member of Parliament for Bath, warmly welcomed Jamie Luck, Director of Bath based charity Mentoring Plus who have established a regional partnership which has secured funding from Department of Education to launch a business mentoring scheme for local teenagers.
This national initiative, as managed by the Careers Enterprise Company, will see over 20,000 secondary students receive mentoring from inspirational businesses from their local community.
Across B&NES, Bristol, South Glos and North Somerset, this work will be delivered by ‘West of England Mentoring’ – a partnership between Mentoring Plus, Bath Bridge and Bristol projects Ablaze and Babassa, Mentoring Plus.
The partnership has over 40 years of experience in mentoring best practice, and knows how to structure business mentoring programmes that are effective and inspirational.
Between now and July 2018, West of England Mentoring will work with over 500 students across the region. To do this, inspirational businesses are needed to provide mentors from their teams to co-deliver in-school sessions with the West of England team.
Ben is calling upon local businesses to support this excellent initiative. He said: “For this initiative to succeed Mentoring Plus need teams of business mentors to co-deliver group mentoring sessions in schools.
“Each business only needs to commit around 5 staff to delivery up to 12 hours of mentoring sessions to students who may benefit from an extra hand in school.
“For the business people involved it presents a remarkable professional development opportunity and for the business, it creates tangible connection into a local school through a well-established, safe and inspirational model.”
The next dinner with the Bath Business Partnership is on 11th May where the guest speaker is Chris Skidmore MP, Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office.
For more information about this event and membership of the Bath Business Partnership, contact Leonie Spencer via [email protected] or call 07792 663850.