SIR — There was a report in your paper on May 24 in which traders were being asked to join a new business organisation.

As chairman of our chamber of commerce, an organisation that has served the business community on all the major panels locally and regionally for decades, I wondered whether we have been doing things wrong.

In representing my members on a day-to-day basis from an easy access town centre shop, and with my home and business phone line open for anyone seven days a week, I couldn't be more available to give and receive advice or downright "sleeves rolled up" help.

This is of little concern to most of your readers, but this next bit should be.

I have lived and breathed Minehead, its ups and downs, as a businessman for over 40 years.

For most of those years the chamber acted, like many other community organisations in the town, independently on projects to enhance trade, community feeling and civic pride. Simple as that.

The chamber is now a member of the recently formed Events Group in Minehead.

Made up of many organisations singing from the same hymn sheet, it is the first attempt at forming a joined-up annual calendar of events in the town through a series of festivals.

With some town and district funding, and a marketing strategy co-ordinated by our new visioning and information centre managers, it is actually working well.

Our college, churches, Rotary, Lions, voluntary sector leaders, the Regal Theatre, our chamber, the RNLI, Butlins and the West Somerset Railway, along with both the district and town councils, sit and decide on actions, share good practice and link insurance and props where we can.

Now that is just one joined up set of organisations.

Minehead Development Trust is another. Ten organisations sit around a table monthly to receive and input information on a series of specific projects for Minehead that need not only local but regional and national funding.

The Old Hospital Community Ownership Project is just one of them.

Then there is the Mineheed Visioning Panel involving all the above, along with both local councils and our county council.

This brings in the big guns, those with purse strings and funding streams to make projects work, and encourage the development of an overall long term plan for the town - your and my town.

Five years ago it seemed it was difficult to get even town and district councils to talk to each other, let alone all the community groups. Time and energy was wasted.

This has changed. New emerging groups like Revive Minehead have also given Minehead a shot in the arm, and I believe this is now reinvigorating Minehead's Area Panel, the platform set up by councils to allow individuals to fire questions directly at the heads of service provision on the top table.

Minehead has led a new way in all this.

Mary Portas has tried to encourage town teams to reinvigorate market towns. Minehead is way ahead of this game.

Result? The least number of empty shops in ten years, and from a position of not even being recognised on the Somerset Market Towns map in 2008, we now fill cars to go to their meetings.

Times are hard and money short, but Minehead is trying.

Graham Sizer,

Chairman,

Minehead Chamber of Trade and Commerce.