Council hosts North Norfolk Annual Business Forum

Date published: 26th March 2025

North Norfolk District Council successfully hosted the North Norfolk Annual Business Forum earlier this week, in the beautiful setting of Holkham Estate.

Business representatives from around the district gathered for networking, inspiring talks, and to hear what future events and funding opportunities would be available to them.

Peter Mitchell, Managing Director for Holkham Estate, spoke about the challenges and successes of adapting their business model to the changing business landscape. He noted the importance of creating a vibrant and loyal workplace culture, and the importance of embracing change while working with the local community.

Attendees offered their thoughts and ideas on what support they would like to see for local businesses, key factors included access to funding and more networking opportunities.

NNDC was therefore pleased to introduce ‘Invest North Norfolk’, the Council’s new business support brand. Its intention is to bring together all the support, information and guidance available to help growing businesses and to provide a platform for a range of forthcoming activities.

Stuart Quick, Economic Growth Manager, commented: “Invest North Norfolk, or INN, is the Council’s business-facing identity, and the website created to support it serves as a resource hub to assist local businesses with their growth aspirations. 

Our goal was to create a portal that would simplify access to relevant, practical resources for busy businesses, including information about events, grants, commercial businesses space, apprenticeships, workshops etc.

We hope it is a useful tool and that businesses feel inspired to connect with us and collaborate with each other.”

Cllr John Toye, Portfolio Holder for Sustainable Growth, commented on the event: “We’ve had an amazing time, we’ve heard some great stories from Peter [Mitchell], who was very inspiring.

We’ve had a whole range of businesses here today, and I hope they take away new relationships, new partnerships and have talked to the exhibitors today to find out how they can assist them.

We will engage further in future and grow North Norfolk into the real powerhouse that we know exists.”

Lyam Thorpe, who attended from Naked Kitchens, added: “I think today has been really inspiring, seeing so many different companies come together. The way it has been put forward, with the videos and interactive sessions was quite inspiring.

What I’d like to take away from today is all the different type of businesses in North Norfolk and how we can network with them and use them with our business.”                                                                                                                                                                            

Check out Invest North Norfolk here.

The next event is a Cultural Partnership Workshop, and Apprenticeship Network Meeting meeting in May (RSVP available soon).

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