Leading business people from Sussex were out in force yesterday at the Sussex Enterprise annual conference.

More than 700 delegates attended the event in the Brighton Dome complex.

The morning session featured keynote speeches from Mark Froud, Sussex Enterprise's chief executive, Liz Savage, easyJet's director of business development, and Debra Veal, who is the youngest woman to row across the Atlantic solo.

In the afternoon, there were a number of "training tasters", covering subjects such as sales, communication and presentation skills and action-centred leadership.

Mr Froud said: "It's been absolutely brilliant. The main purpose was to give the delegates something positive to take away with them and I think we've definitely achieved that."

However, he also used the conference to take the Government to task about the amount of bureaucracy facing businesses and launched a report into the burden of red tape.

He said: "Almost nine out of ten businesses in Sussex are not growing as well as they could because of government bureaucracy. That has to stop.

"Planning regulations are a serious problem. Our recent report found that Worthing, Hastings and Adur councils' planning processes were the best, with the majority of applications being processed within eight weeks. The worst performing council is Rother."

He recognised certain regulations were necessary to make sure rogue traders were kept at bay but the recent explosion of regulations had become unacceptable to small businesses, which made up a large part of the Sussex economy.

Ms Savage, who spent her first day as easyJet's director of business development at the conference, talked about the rise of the company from a two-plane airline seven years ago to 68 planes today and how it had become the most successful low-cost airline in Europe.

She said businesses needed to "really understand what the customer values and is prepared to pay".

She said after the September 11 attacks, easyJet grew by 40 per cent by taking an advantage of a downturn in the market.

Ms Veal talked about her journey rowing across the Atlantic alone after her husband abandoned the trip after developing an uncontrollable fear of the ocean.

She said: "Choose your attitude - don't let others choose it for you."

She combated criticism from others by "realising success wasn't about brute strength but more about endurance and the ability to keep on going".

Mr Froud added: "The message is clear - there are lots of things you can do to improve your business."

Thursday March 20 2003