Be part of business in Shaftesbury

From the high street to the food festival, Chamber members shape what happens in our town. Join us, have your say, and meet the people running businesses alongside you.

Join now

Join us for October Networking at the Mitre on 21st October at 08:30

Join fellow business owners and professionals from across North Dorset for a morning of networking, great food, and a refreshingly realistic look at boundaries in the messy reality of work and life.

Our guest speaker is local author and workplace mental health trainer Emma Saccomani. When you’re juggling different roles, responsibilities and competing demands, it’s easy to get pulled in different directions or end up carrying things that aren’t really yours to carry. Emma will challenge some of our boundaries thinking, bust a few common myths and share practical, down-to-earth ideas for navigating the messy muddle.

No magic wands or perfect boundaries, but you might leave with one small thing worth trying.

Join now

WHO WE ARE

We volunteer to support businesses in Shaftesbury and the surrounding area. We are predominantly made up of retail shop owners, but also accountants, a surveyor, lawyers, event organisers, designers ….we have a variety of skills and backgrounds!

As Shaftesbury’s Chamber of Commerce, which is a formal way of saying Shaftesbury’s Business Community, we are associated with Dorset Chamber of Commerce with all their services and networking opportunities.

THE CHAMBER POT
And as we’re always looking to find new ways to support local business, we’ve started The Chamber Pot, which is a one-off fund of £250 every quarter (or when finances allow!) to help a small business grow and innovate. Click here to find out more: https://www.shaftesburychamber.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Shaftesbury-Chamber-Pot-Applications.pdf

WHAT WE DO

We support local business by:

lobbying our county council and town council on matters that affect business in the town.
we do joint initiatives with the Town Council to support the local economy
we liaise with market organisers and act as a coordinator with High Street businesses
we organise a Christmas Light Switch On event and then a Christmas Late Night Shopping event
we give financial support to smaller, emerging ventures and new events
we advise and help people wanting to open a business in town
we liaise with landlords to keep up to date with their plans
we attend local business forums and support business awards
we respond to calls of help from the business community
we support each other!

WE MEET AT 17:30 ON THE FIRST THURSDAY OF EACH MONTH AT THE GROSVENOR ARMS, IN THEIR LIBRARY ROOM! COME AND SAY HELLO, YOU’RE WELCOME TO SIT IN AND FIND OUT MORE ABOUT US.

TOWN CALENDAR

Shaftesbury Carnival – 3rd October

Shaftesbury Chamber Networking – 21st October

with Emma Saccomani

Christmas Lights Switch – 23rd November

Late Night Shopping – 10th December

Christmas Market – 13th December

Shaftesbury Fodd Festival – 2nd May 2027

MEMBERS’ AREA

You will be asked for your members password to access the following pages.

Dorset Chamber info & Newsletters

Looking to start a business in Shaftesbury?

AGENTS:
Wooley & Wallis:
Myddelton & Major
Goadsby

Lawyers:
Farnfields
Rutters
Blanchards Bailey
Maclachlan
Trethowan

Accountants:
Hub Accountants
Ward Goodman
Andrews & Palmer

Town Information

A hilltop town with more than a thousand years of trading behind it

Shaftesbury sits 700 feet up on a greensand hill in north Dorset, looking out across the Blackmore Vale towards Cranborne Chase and the Wiltshire border. It’s the only significant hilltop settlement in the county, and on a clear day you can see for miles.

Founded by King Alfred in the 9th century Dorset Guide, Shaftesbury grew up around its abbey and has been a market town ever since. Today it’s home to around 9,200 people Wikipedia, a working high street of independent shops and pubs, a calendar of events from the Food Festival to the Gold Hill Fair, and a business community that sits within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape Grokipedia.

It’s also famous for Gold Hill, the steep cobbled street immortalised in Ridley Scott’s 1973 Hovis advert and still one of the most photographed views in England.

That’s the town. The Chamber is here to help the businesses that make it work.

Expert Tips

How does your website fare in searches and how you can boost its chances of being seen?
1. Any words in your search query need to be on the front page for them to appear.
2. If your site hasn’t been updated in a while, think what you could refresh as Google favours sites that have recent updates.
3. Searching and scrolling through search results until you find your company and clicking on it regularly helps as Google favours sites that have been visited recently.
4. Go to more than one page on your site and don’t click on any competitors after your search or you will boost them instead.
5. Links from trusted sites to your company’s site are the best way to get to the top but obviously difficult to achieve.
6. So, taking a look at the wording on the front page is a quick win. Putting contact info on the front page also helps boost visibility.

Off The High Street

If you have a business on one of our estates or at a nearby commercial centre in one of our surrounding villages and have info you’d like to share with your business community, let us know – we’ll put it up here and start a local network noticeboard.

Business Reports and Surveys

August Cyber Crime newsletter from Dorset PCC

June Cyber Crime newsletter from Dorset PCC

We are an Associated Town Chamber of Dorset Chamber, accredited by the British Chambers of Commerce.