The Dalby Chamber of Commerce Christmas Street Party to return

The Dalby Chamber of Commerce’s new board has voted to postpone the Business Excellence Awards, but resolved to fill with another much-loved community event. Find out more here.

The Dalby Silver Band were one of many acts that kept locals entertained at past Christmas Street Parties held by the Dalby Chamber of Commerce. Photo: Gen Kennedy/Dalby Herald

The Dalby Chamber of Commerce has opted to postpone their annual Business Excellence Awards in favour of the return of the Christmas Street Party.

The awards, which have been running for almost 30 years recognise local businesses that have contributed to making Dalby a great place to do business.

Dalby Chamber of Commerce vice president Nick Rogers said the new board had decided to postpone the event this year to give them time to implement new ideas.

“The Business Excellence Awards are a massive part of our year, but what we wanted to do as a new board is to overhaul it and give it a refresher to make it bigger and better than years past,” he said.

“To do that we figured we’d postpone it this year to give us more time to focus and prep for next year and that also enables us to bring back the Christmas Street Party.

“Most of the feedback around the decision has been really positive, which has been great, a lot of people are excited to see the Christmas Party come back to life and we look forward to celebrating the business awards next year.”

Dalby Chamber of Commerce's Nick Rogers

Mr Rogers said they had been working with other community groups to ensure Dalby could enjoy more events.

“We had a big Business Awards last year which was a success and with the change of the new board that was elected this year we have aligned some of our focus to focus more on small business growth and our local community events,” he said.

“We kicked off the year with an International Women's Day event and we have a few other events we are talking with sponsors about and a couple of small business focused events.

“Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of feedback from the community and our members that they wanted the Christmas Street Party back so we started collaborating with some of the local organisations who hold events around Christmas.

“We started a subcommittee because we wanted to make sure we don't have any segregation between our community groups.”

Mr Rogers said it was still early days with the planning of the Christmas party and they were seeking feedback from the community.

“Next Tuesday we have another meeting and we will have dates and a location locked away for the event,” he said.

“We are really excited for the event and would love to see the community get behind it and if there is any feedback or ideas of they’d like to see at the event please reach out.”