Bath small business champion and tireless campaigner Angela Ladd has died in the city’s Dorothy House Hospice aged 65.
Angela had been unwell for the last two years as she battled cancer. But she maintained a gruelling schedule of meetings and support for the city’s small business owners.
She launched her own business, Angela Ladd German Translations, in 1993 and was a fully-qualified translator, interpreter, tutor and cultural awareness consultant with extensive experience in the aerospace, automotive, hotel and tourism sectors.
However, it was her unswerving support for small businesses in Bath that brought her a high profile across the city. She chaired the Federation of Small Business’ Bath branch for more than five years before leaving in 2010 to form the independent Small Business Focus – taking the entire FSB branch committee with her.
The previous year she had received the South West of England Regional Development Agency’s Woman Enterprise Champion Award.
Two weeks ago, despite her condition, she chaired the AGM of the Small Business Focus and then led a discussion on how the group should evolve to meet new challenges.
Small Business Focus secretary Alex Schlesinger said today: “We shall all remember her as a fighter for the small businesses of Bath and for all of us who are a part of this community. Her abilities and enthusiasm for all she undertook was truly breath-taking.
“She had been in poor health for at least two years, yet her so obvious physical decline did nothing to impair her work for the community.
“In that time she was a very active chair of Small Business Focus, while simultaneously organising a major market in the Victoria Hall, Radstock, a Sunday market at Sainsbury’s, representing small business at the LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership) and working as a prime mover for the two successful Bath Conferences.
“She was also the major force behind the Entrepreneurs’ Group, which held 55 events in two years, attended by so many people, many of whom had just started in business.”
“In all that she did, there was no hint or suggestion of personal gain or aggrandizement. Her intellectual honesty was total. Her best legacy shall be the continuation of the work she undertook with such honest enthusiasm.”
Director of Business West in Bath Ian Bell said Angela had been a significant presence in the discussions about the economic life of Bath and a determined spokesman for small businesses.
“We are the poorer for her passing but her legacy will live on – that we should do all we can to help foster an entrepreneurial spirit in Bath and support independent businesses in whatever sector they are engaged,” he said.
She is survived by her two children Samantha and Ben. Her husband Chris died five years ago.
