Our Jobs & Businesses

THREE WAYS TO CREATE JOBS AND BUILD MORE PROSPERITY

Are we making enough of our tourism? I have launched Destination History that brings together all our history into tourism packages that can further boost our biggest local industry by attracting higher margin, out of season tourists. We know that 8% of the nation’s economy is related to tourism. We are blessed with some of the most attractive and wonderful towns, beaches and countryside in the UK. If we can see a 30% growth in visitors out of the high season we will create new jobs and support all our local businesses, not least our shops, hotels and restaurants – a win-win siuation for everyone!

More jobs in new industries – green industries. I believe that we need to make much more of the opportunities that our wind farms offer us – renewable energy to renew our economy. I have launched a bid for the area to become a Marine Energy Park attracting leading edge research and development facilities for renewable energy, creating hundreds of jobs supporting operations and maintenance functions to make our area a centre of excellence for marine energy. The wind turbines operations and maintenance sector is growing every day. At current projections, it promises a £26 billion spend over the next ten years. I will be doing my very best to bring as much of that budget as possible to South Thanet and Sandwich. We have a glorious past and I want to make it my job to make sure we will have a glorious future to go with it.

Start your own Business Having run two small businesses myself, I know that small businesses are the life blood of our economy. And they have been having a bad time over the last ten years. Too much regulation, too many dictats from central government, not enough flexibility to react to the market and altogether too much remote micro management from a government that does not understand small businesses and does not seem to care. I would like to be the small business champion, supporting entrepreneurialism and helping to remove the barriers to growth. We need more focus on the needs and interests of those who make the money and less on the government that spends it. That is only way that small businesses can expand, employ more workers and lead to a better life for ourselves and our families.
Your ambitions and your ideas matter. Tell me what you think will make a real difference to South Thanet and Sandwich… email me at laura@telllaura.org.uk