Angela was pleased to welcome Google into the constituency.

Google has long been a supporter of the UK towns. They are a founding member of the Great British High Street awards, run with the DCLG, helping provide expert training to the UK’s most stand-out towns. They also run the Google Digital Garage in cities around the UK, providing free digital skills training to all who can attend.

They have seen first-hand the appetite of communities such as Ashton for digital skills training.

They want to match this appetite with specific, tailored training to market towns across the UK, giving local people and traders the tools and digital skills they need to grow their businesses, careers and confidence. Market towns traditionally have poor levels of digital skills and connectivity.

Research from Innovate UK found that the top priority for towns was digital skills, followed by improved digital marketing in its Digital High Street 2020 report.