INFRASTRUCTURE, the skills shortage, Trident, supply chain and renewable energy were all issues raised during an election hustings.

Furness branch of the Federation of Small Businesses hosted a hustings event with the Barrow and Furness parliamentary candidates at Furness College on Tuesday evening.

The panel of Loraine Birchall (Liberal Democrat), Simon Fell (Conservative), Rob O’Hara (Green Party), Alan Piper (UKIP) and John Woodcock (Labour Co-operative) took questions from the business community.

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Jayne Moorby, marketing manager at Oxley, Ulverston, asked the panel about tackling the skills shortage and making the area a more attractive place to live and work to keep money in the area.

Ms Birchall said: "We need to get businesses working much closer with colleges, we need to consult with businesses in terms of what they need to fill the skills gap."

She said there need to be incentives to get people into the kind of courses (businesses) need. Ms Birchall said: "We need to do more to engage. As small businesses we have a responsibility to talk to kids to show them what is possible."

She said housing and the infrastructure also needs addressing.

Mr Fell said: "We ultimately need to encourage people come here and stay here. We look at the town centre, the BID is doing good work on that, we need to make the town centre an attractive place so that when someone comes to visit for a job with their family they say it somewhere I could live, somewhere I could shop and spend time."

He said housing and infrastructure needs to be right and there needs to be an industrial strategy for Cumbria.

Mr O'Hara said children are being failed at school with the "enormous pressure" in "exam factories" and people want to leave the area.

He said: "Education needs to change drastically. Many, many students are late developers who don't get going until their 20s, and they are written off.

"Very often there are so many young people who don't meet the academic qualifications at 16 and 18, but they have so much more about them that would be good for business. The culture needs to change."

Mr Piper said he has seen a "massive skills shortage" in the hospitality industry.

He said: "There is a gap between what small businesses need and what the education system spits out. I am more of a social worker than an employer at times.

"We (UKIP) are very keen on encouraging STEM subjects and removing tuition fees from that.

"I have found a disconnect with the education system." He said Infrastructure is also a huge issue to be tackled.

Mr Woodcock said it really important that the Choose Cumbria initiative continues projecting the Furness area out to the rest of the country and the world.

He said: It's extraordinary what we have here. A lot of people locally like to keep the secret to themselves, it's an amazing the quality of life, we have such an amazing offer but we have to get the word out about it."

Mr Woodcock said businesses need to be empowered through the BID to bring more people to the town centre.

He said: "Our teachers often do an extraordinary job in difficult circumstances and my focus has been to say to the business community and others, we are all in this together we all have a stake in being able to help young people out."