Welcome to the Harborough Business Bulletin. We provide a fortnightly overview of the latest business related news, initiatives and support packages.

This year Harborough Innovation Centre is offering a Business Christmas Lunch in a decorated Christmas room for the entire day (8:30am-5pm). Combine your final annual board meeting, sales meeting, or social gathering, with two helpings of tea and coffee and a delicious Christmas buffet lunch.

Conveniently located with free parking, Harborough Innovation Centre offers the perfect blend of modern amenities and a professional setting for your Christmas buffet lunch. The catering options complement the state-of-the-art meeting facilities, ensuring a complete festive experience for all your employees and guests.

Join Sam Lockwood, the founder of Marquess Tax for a free talk about property taxation as well as his journey, so far, in forming a specialist tax consultancy business based at Harborough Innovation Centre. If you want to learn more about property taxation as well as listen and share in the experiences of setting up a new business, then join Sam on Tuesday 28 November.

This is a fantastic opportunity to network with fellow business owners within the Harborough District and have a guided tour of Harborough Innovation Centre and their multi-functioning workspaces and meeting areas.

Mental Health Friendly Places is a new initiative that aims to train local organisations and groups to become a Mental Health Friendly Place.  
The partnership project is led by Leicestershire County Council and includes Leicester City Council and Rutland County Council. The programme offers free training delivered by a dedicated team. The training will help any organisation recognise the signs and symptoms of poor mental health, have healthy conversations and signpost to local mental health and wellbeing services. 

An innovative print technology firm, Haybrooke, is now based at the Harborough Innovation Centre (HIC). The director, John Roche, explains what his business is and why he is now based at the Harborough Innovation Centre. His interview highlights the many advantages for businesses of being based at the Harborough Innovation Centre.

The East Midlands Chamber Q4 survey is now live. The survey is the largest and longest running of its kind and the premier tool for informing decision makers locally and in Westminster on the needs of East Midlands Businesses. The anonymised results feed directly into the Bank of England’s decision-making process on monetary policy developments. The survey is also used by the Chamber to shape its engagement with politicians locally and nationally. The survey is for anyone in a business to respond to. Remember that all respondents receive a personalised digital report showing how their responses map against the regional trends.

The NHS in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) is inviting people to have their say on proposals to improve healthcare services in Lutterworth.

The local NHS is responding to the changing needs of people in Lutterworth by proposing to keep Feilding Palmer hospital open, refurbish it and expand the number of services provided to approximately 17,000 appointments each year.

The changes will mean more services available to residents of Lutterworth and the surrounding areas, reducing the distance people have to travel for treatment, saving over 200,000 miles each year and avoiding costly car parking charges.

The public consultation will run until Sunday 14 January 2024.

Become a voluntary mentor for the Help to Grow: Management course and commit 10 hours over 12 weeks to support businesses with their growth action plan.

You can sign up as a mentor now. You may be working as an employee, a founder, a trusted expert or an adviser looking to get involved in this national effort to boost small businesses' performance.