Tony Randall

Shropshire Chamber of Commerce president Tony Randall today broke his silence on the feud which saw his would-be successor quit.

Nick Chavasse resigned on Tuesday after the chamber board agreed to hand Mr Randall a new executive role of operations director, meaning his successor as president would be taking on a virtually ornamental role.

The resignation was on many people’s lips at the Chamber’s Expo business networking event at the Lord Hill Hotel in Shrewsbury yesterday, when directors answered concerned members’ questions.

Mr Randall did not attend, but later spoke to the Shropshire Star.

He said: “My great sadness is the fact that we couldn’t retain both talents in the chamber, as Nick is very good on policy and representation, and we had been working on trying to find a solution to go forward.

“It was basically agreed that I would relinquish the presidency earlier on the basis I would run the operations, and I think he has reflected on that and felt he wanted to take control of the Chamber. By doing that it was difficult for me to go on and vice versa, and that’s why he left.”

Power

He added that giving him the operations role was the decision of the board after both men put forward cases to be given power at a meeting on Monday.

“We haven’t decided as a board what the future is,” Mr Randall said.

Mr Chavasse said on Wednesday that he felt it was time for the Chamber to attract ‘new blood’, and that Mr Randall should step aside.

Chamber vice president Keith Winter said part of the board’s concern over Mr Randall losing control of the patronage scheme – one disputed area – was that it could lead to the company losing out on the money he would bring in.

Speaking at the Expo, Mr Winter said: “Because of the way Tony is, and because his skills brought in £170,000 in a difficult trading year, if he had gone I don’t think next year we would get quite so much, as we would have lost quite a lot of money on patronage.

“You have only to look at the accounts to see the patronage ensures we are solvent, and I don’t think Nick would have had the same time to give to the role as Tony. Nick really wanted to push membership up. He wanted to take it from around 800 now to a much larger number.”

Chamber members have said they want an emergency meeting.