ECONOMY

Small businesses

90% of the businesses in Derbyshire Dales are small, with 9 or fewer employees. The Green Party believes in localism and our policies are designed to encourage and support small businesses. We believe that too much emphasis is placed on big business, which often removes its profits from the area rather than spending them in other local businesses. Small business is a major source of innovation and a vital resource at a time of unprecedented change and is often run by people who care about their communities.

​

Diversity

Agriculture is Derbyshire Dales’ biggest economic sector (the category ‘agriculture, forestry & fishing’ makes up 20.1% of our economy), but the second is ‘professional, scientific and technical’ (13.7%). My background as an engineering design contractor puts me in that second category. We have a diverse economy rather than a purely agricultural one and Derbyshire has been a centre of technical innovation since the industrial revolution. Our largest sector is of course very important, but the other 80% is sometimes overlooked. I cover agriculture in the ‘countryside’ policy section.

​

Clean growth

The council position responsible for overseeing the economic strategy is called ‘Cabinet member for clean growth and regeneration’. The council needs to pay more than lip-service to the ‘clean’ part of this. Flooding, intensified by climate change, has already caused such harm to Derbyshire that climate change needs to be taken seriously from a local economic perspective, to say nothing of the larger reasons.

The County Council has a modest budget to put towards encouraging businesses to come to Derbyshire. I would push for this to be focused on sustainable industries and ensure that any support comes with requirements for environmental protection, use of renewable energy, etc.

​

We support microgeneration, which would bring jobs and income to the area, and is discussed in the ‘energy’ section.

​

Being outside the national park, Ashbourne division is often forgotten in discussions of tourism, but we have several attractions for day-trippers (e.g., Sudbury Hall) and attractive villages. In council I would work to ensure that this division gets a fair shake when support for this part of the economy is allocated, as I believe that we have the potential to attract more visitors than we do.

​

Paying for our policies

Many of our policies call for increased investment in things such as energy, transport and social programmes, so it is quite reasonable to ask how we will pay for it. We have identified several areas of mismanagement and waste which are currently costing us far more than our proposals. I've written some blog posts on this subject including this one, this one and this one. This is not by any means an exhaustive list.