Future unsure for chamber and its CEO

Wayne Walford. Photo / Warren Buckland

Hawke's Bay Chamber of Commerce president Brent Linn plans to sit down with returning chief executive officer (CEO) Wayne Walford to discuss the organisation's future.

The unsuccessful National Party Napier candidate will return to his job tomorrow but his future is uncertain. He took extended unpaid leave to contest the Napier electorate and is likely to enter Parliament in the next three years.

He is 63 on the party list, just two places short of the number of seats won by National.

In National's second term of government four people on the National party list who did not make it into Parliament at election time later found themselves parliamentarians.

He returns to a chamber job that has moved office. It recently relocated from Hastings to the Eastern Institute of Technology campus in Taradale, joining other regional business agencies looking at sharing a central business hub.

"The board has done some restructuring since and so we will start a negotiation," Mr Walford said. "I'm not sure where I sit in all of that, so I look forward to the conversation and see what goes from there."

Mr Linn said he was looking forward to Mr Walford taking up the reins as CEO but was coy about the chamber's future.

"Along with other businesses it is actively considering what the business hub might be in the future. The board is always looking at the way the business operates and that, like all businesses, will change over time."

Acting chamber CEO Graeme Norton said he had enjoyed the temporary assignment and was looking forward to spending more time on his other commitments.

He said the chamber was not in good financial health.

"It would be a rare membership-based organisation that is flowering and rosy," he said. His willingness to be acting CEO was "not normal".

"It is very difficult to get people to engage.

"In business, for example, a lot of people have got their head down and are just trying to survive. They haven't got the time to put energy into organisations, however well they might support them."

There were too many business-support organisations in the region and rationalisation was likely, he said.

"That is not a bad thing."

Mr Linn said annual membership subscriptions to the chamber were about 10 per cent down on the year previous, when there had been a similar drop.

The chamber has about 450 business members but Mr Linn said it had developed other income streams such as providing certificate of origin documentation, hosting government agencies and business mentors.

Its signature event, the annual Business Awards, was an ongoing connection with the business community.

"As an organisation we need to balance our business against its subscription income or alternative forms of income.

"The chamber has developed additional services that had helped shift some of the reliance from subscription income.

"They all have some contribution to running the overhead of the organisation, giving it a capacity to not be solely reliant on membership subscriptions."

Mr Walford said he was living in interesting times.

"But never mind, it will all work out - it'll shake down."