EARLIER this month, Worcestershire businesses met to take part in the big Local Enterprise Partnership annual conference.

Local Enterprise Partnerships were set up in 2010 to make sure business’s voice is heard in our local strategy for growth. Over the last six years, Worcestershire has thrived and it is the third fastest-growing economy in the UK behind only Oxfordshire and London.

The LEP (an ungainly acronym if ever there was one) has put communications as one of its main goals and, with that in mind, the LEP chairman Mark Stansfield joined me and my colleague Nigel Huddleston MP to talk to the four major mobile phone operators about their plans to bring better 4G mobile phone signals to the whole county.

The meeting was also attended by Worcestershire County Council, Malvern Hills and Wychavon District Councils as well as BT Openreach.

Rolling out good mobile signals goes hand in hand with delivering superfast broadband connections and we all agreed to look at how we can work together to get proper internet access as swiftly as possible to even the most remote parts of the county.

The LEP's focus on getting people to get connected is well timed. Most businesses start off in a spare room or a garage and, while working from home, they depend on good internet and good phone connections as they start to trade.

I am convinced that we must aim high to make sure Worcestershire gets ahead of the curve.

I'd like to see us take the leap into ultrafast broadband and 5G technology ahead of other areas of the country. That message was passed on to the mobile phone companies and Openreach and I hope they will identify some innovative plans to make world-class Worcestershire the best connected county. In addition, welcoming the arrival of companies like Gigaclear – which is already supplying homes in north of the county and can offer a one gigabyte connection straight to your home – will hopefully spur on their rivals to raise their game.

Alongside this new technology challenge, we still need better road and rail connections for our commuters. Major infrastructure projects like the improvements to the Carrington Road bridge and the dualling of the Cotswold Line from Oxford towards Worcester are expensive but they are all important pieces of the puzzle to encourage more people to live and work successfully in world-class Worcestershire.