Business Partnership celebrates 30th anniversary

Henley Business Partnership (HBP) celebrated its 30^th anniversary on Friday at their 3FM meeting at Leander Club.

Founded in 1996, it originally was called the Henley-on-Thames Partnership, with the objective of “creating and maintaining in Henley-on-Thames an environment in which people are pleased to live and work, where commercial and leisure opportunities can flourish, which visitors find attractive and where the town’s attractive and historic character is enhanced.”  The name was changed to the Henley Business Partnership in 2017, but the ethos and objectives of the organisation remain largely unchanged.

Richard Rodway, Director of HBP said, “Henley itself is a very special place and a real coming together of the different sections of the community for the good. The relationship we built here all with a view to making Henley a better place to live and a better place to come and work as seen through initiatives such as the Living Advent Calendar which was born out of this group, the House and Garden Show and more recently Greener Henley projects.  Most recently, in terms of small ways, that we can help the community, we’re sponsoring the Henley Herald Community Champion Awards with a Beyond Business Award.”

Richard then went on to thank Emma Vanstone-Booth for her time as being a Director and presented her with a bouquet of flowers.  Emma said, “This is such a jolly group, and this has given such colour and meaning to being a part of the community. I always used to work away. I was never really part of any community until I started working with Phil (Philip Booth Esq) just after COVID and fell in love with the town. I hadn’t actually realised how fortunate we are. I was always too busy jetting away and I came back and Niki (Schäfer) and I had a chat at Carolyn Molyneux’s funeral. We were saying farewell to that lovely human being and we decided it was an awfully good idea for me to interfere. And I’ve loved it.”

The meeting was then treated to a talk by Harriet Reed-Ryan Director of the Henley Literary Festival who also celebrated a milestone 20^th anniversary this year.

Harriet announced that they had their most successful Festival with 30,000 in-person tickets sold plus thousands more online. Harriet exclaimed it was “mind-blowing” considering when they started 20 years ago they sold just 1,000 tickets.  The Festival received great media coverage this year including being featured on This Morning and Ed Conway’s clip on social media talking about the humble fish finger and how it is caught in the North Sea, then sent to China for processing before it comes back to our supermarkets, travelling around 30,000 miles which got 555K views on Instagram.  Harriet thanked her Mum, Sue Ryan who founded the Festival and told the audience that she was grateful that she went with the option of starting the Festival rather than opening a coffee shop, saying “back then we didn’t have many in Henley!”  COVID was influential for the Literary Festival with not only attracting best-selling author John Grisham for an online talk but it was the first year they built the marquee at Phyllis Court to allow for social distancing. Now it is their largest capacity venue with 500 seats which sold out 15 times this year.

The next 3FM meeting is on 20 November and Emma Sweet will be talking about her Ace Places Cards business.  For more information about the Henley Business Partnership go to https://henleybusinesspartnership.co.uk/