Insider Media Limited

The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce has announced that it will merge with Southern Staffordshire Chamber and its component chambers Burton & District, Chase and Lichfield & Tamworth. The newly formed group will trade under the name Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Group. John Lamb from the chamber group told Insider that the move will “give the chambers in South Staffordshire a bigger voice and access to far more services”.

Lamb added that the move was “purely coincidental” to the Greater Birmingham Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) bid, and had been planned “long before the submission”.

Also part of the chamber group are the Solihull Chamber, the Institute of Asian Businesses and the Midlands Chapter of the British American Business Council, which links businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.

The official launch of the new group will take place at the Chamber’s annual dinner and awards this evening, which will be hosted by president Paul Bassi at the International Convention Centre.

Bassi, chief executive of Birmingham-based property company Real Estate Investors, said: “We still have work to do to make the Chamber fit for the 21st century. We will continue to improve our performance and measures will be taken shortly to enable the president and vice-presidents to focus on public policy and advocacy priorities.

“We have high ambitions for growing yet further our membership base and for increasing the return from our member services.”

Lamb added that the merged components would have access to a broader choice of services, and would be better represented “at both local and national level”.

He added: “We are probably the leading organisation on developing overseas links – that and many other services are going to be hugely beneficial to the combined chambers.”

Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Group is one of the UK’s oldest and largest chambers, and represents about 6,000 member companies which employ over 200,000 people.