MP to speak up for small businesses after North Shropshire visits

Helen recently visited The Shropshire Distillery, a multi award-winning gin distillery in Ellesmere. Distillery numbers across the UK have grown from 190 to 930 in the last eight years alone, supporting over 446,000 jobs and contributing £13 billion to the UK economy.

The Shropshire Distillery is one of several companies producing delicious gin in North Shropshire but faces challenges such as high business rates and rising energy costs – issues that Helen intends to raise with the new Government.

The MP also stopped in at Ridgway Rentals, a leading plant hire company that is based in St Martins and employs dozens of local workers. They hire everything from telehandlers to 50-ton excavators and transport plant and machinery to construction sites across the UK using their fleet of HGVs and trailers.

However, life is made difficult with inconsistent rules across the country regarding the transportation of abnormal loads. The MP will be speaking to National Highways and the Department for Transport to press for the regulations to be standardised.

Helen visited Arla Foods’ site in Oswestry on Thursday, where 30,000 tonnes of cheese is packed every year, and a large amount of power is supplied by solar panels at the site. Arla is the fifth largest dairy company in the world and has a number of operations across the UK creating products that are seen on many of the major supermarket shelves. 

Helen was also delighted to meet nine-year-old Chloe Elsmore and purchase one of the beautiful bracelets the budding entrepreneur has been making during the summer holidays to sell at her mum’s Sunshine Creations shop in Wem. Chloe has made hundreds of pounds and is donating all of the money to Grinshill Animal Rescue.

The MP was this week returning to Parliament, where she intends to highlight the issues facing small businesses and press the Government to do more to ensure they can succeed and help provide much-needed economic growth.

Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire, said:

“Small businesses are crucial to the local economy in North Shropshire, while larger firms like Arla provide much-needed employment in the constituency.

“Local firms need more support as they are forced to struggle with high energy bills, confusing regulation and unfair business rates.

“These are all issues that I raised with the previous government and I will now be pressing Labour to act to make life fairer for small businesses.

“The business rates system needs a complete overhaul and we also need a proper windfall tax on the record profits of oil and gas giants to generate money to provide support to the people and businesses that really need it.”