Ed Balls Visits Swindon Business Women

Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls visited The Core in Swindon earlier today to discuss the challenges that female entrepreneurs face running their own businesses.

Amongst those in attendance were Amanda Franks of Frankly Recruitment, founder of Vox PR Sue Pycroft and local journalist Fiona Scott. 

The majority of women in the room had founded, grown and now run their own local businesses. 

Mr Balls was keen to hear about the women's experiences of running companies in Swindon and the hurdles that they had to overcome in order to succeed.

Balls believes that there's a lot that local and national Government can do to support women in business and that the economy in Swindon is on the up: "From the outside Swindon has a great reputation, a strong sense of common purpose and is a very exciting place for entrepreneurs.

It's a fantastic place to not only start up a business but for that business to grow and thrive."

Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for South Swindon Anne Snelgrove added "Today was a fantastic opportunity to learn about the vibrant businesses that Swindon has to offer and hear about the sort of things that they're up against.

From restaurants to recruitment agencies Swindon is on the up again and it's wonderful to have that confirmed by so many fantastic female business leaders.

It was superb to hear how flexible working is a concept used in Swindon to encourage more women back in to the work place. Childcare and flexibility are two major factors that impact women in business and are issues that the government both local and national needs to address."

Founder of Frankly Recruitment, Amanda Franks is a major advocate of flexible working and believes that it's worked wonders for her recruitment firm.

Other hot topics included why there has been a decrease in lending to small businesses, redundancy during pregnancy and the cost of childcare. 

Weighing in on why there aren't more women in leadership positions Amanda commented "There are a lot of very successful women in Swindon and I don't think that they're recognised as much as they should be.

From a recruitment perspective there aren't more women in positions of power because they lack confidence. I think that there needs to be more inspirational women in business for females to look up too."

The event wasn't all business though, Ed also took the oppurtunity to enjoy a juice making master class, images of which can be found below: