The Chamber Assembly, Chaired by our President, Emma Holt, gives us the opportunity to curate, shape and strengthen the voice of business for our region. In this session, we'll be gathering evidence and feedback from our Assembly and network with regards to the challenges currently facing businesses. We'll be exploring business rates, increasing costs and overheads, including the challenges now associated with the employment of staff (NIC increases, NLW etc.) and more.

The output from this session will be used to draft a letter to the Chancellor and government ahead of the Spring Statement, and to influence regional and local policy-makers too. This, alongside our economic data, gives us a strong voice to advocate for you, our business community.

Our Assembly isn't an information session, it's a forum to drive real change. By attending, voting and feeding back - you can genuinely work as part of a collective to make meaningful change for the businesses in our region.

We'll also be providing an update on our Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP), and Joe Crolla, Acting Principal Skills Manager, from Greater Manchester Combined Authority will outline how the LSIP plays a critical role in the wider Greater Manchester strategy, and it's relevance to other documents such as the Local Growth Plan, GM Strategy and Get GM Working. If you haven't yet completed the Skills survey, please take a moment here.