| Welcome 
Welcoming

Business 
by Kevin Lynes, Kent County Council, Cabinet Member for Regeneration 
Kent business is our business. Successful businesses create wealth, 
jobs and opportunities in the county.

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We want the Kent economy to grow and develop, to be a place for business to do business - for Kent to be the Garden of Enterprise. 

T
he County Council has a key role in the Kent economy - it is a major employer and spends £860m annually on goods and services, of which £320m a year is spent with 5,000 Kent small and medium sized enterprises. 
We want the Kent economy to grow and develop, to be a place for business to do business - for Kent to be the Garden of Enterprise. 
We want to develop a new relationship with business - an honest and practical relationship which delivers further support to increase business opportunities and growth. This, of course, is particularly important in the current economic climate. 
We therefore set out in December 2008 ten commitments to support business in the county, under the banner 'Backing Kent Business'. These commitments are the County Council's promise for a step change in how we at KCC support Kent business. 
As the Cabinet Member championing business and economic growth in the county, and as a business person myself, I am determined to deliver these commitments to support Kent business. We will work closely with our partners from the business community to help us achieve this and to pioneer and develop new opportunities and new approaches to supporting business - in other words, backing Kent business. 
I encourage the business community to contact me with their views and experiences of working with KCC and their comments about the way legislation and regulation affects them, so we can lobby the government in the UK and Europe, and so we can make it as easy as possible to do business with KCC. 

Kevin Lynes, Kent County Council Cabinet Member for Regeneration 
Members Desk, Sessions House, County Hall, Maidstone ME14 1XQ