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Regional business leaders have hit out at the "big mistake" of yesterday's public sector strikes said to have caused "detrimental effects" across the East Midlands . One chamber estimated it has cost Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire's economy at least £14m while another rejected claims it was a "victimless crime".

The cost of the strikes could cost £500m nationally, it has been claimed. And in the East Midlands, employers were forced to accommodate staff struggling with school closures, abandoned NHS appointments, transport changes and council disruption.

George Cowcher, chief executive of the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce, said: "Businesses are doing everything they can to boost the economy by working flat out to make sales, attract orders, retain valued staff and deliver growth.

"For some workers to walk out over modest changes to a generous pension scheme while others are busting a gut to get the economy moving is a big mistake."

Paul Griffiths, chief executive of the Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce, added: "Strike action in the current economic climate is a risky move.

"Many of our member companies have been in touch with us to say that they are suffering detrimental effects as a result of these strikes. Some commentators see strike action as a victimless crime but our member companies are telling us a different story."

Griffiths added that he backed the government's austerity measures calling them "essential to maintaining our fiscal credibility and helping to stabilise the economy and we should pull together".

But Unison general secretary Dave Prentis, who spoke to activists in Birmingham, said: "History has been made - not by politicians - not by bankers and business leaders, but by the millions of ordinary men and women - few of them militants or hardened activists, many thousands who have never taken industrial action before, who, with courage and quiet resolve have said: ‘enough is enough’."