I’m always proud to talk about Swindon because the evidence shows that we are a town that punches well above its weight.

A few days ago, I was a key speaker at a meeting organised by the Centre for Cities, an independent think tank that publishes data and research about how the UK’s 63 main towns and cities are the country’s economic powerhouses. Through the efforts of local businesses and employees, Swindon consistently ranks as one of the country’s leading places.

Our record is impressive and it was great to be able to showcase that Swindon out performs much larger cities in the south of England. The most recent measure of economic output, Gross Value Added (GVA) per worker, was £59,466.10 – the seventh highest out of 62 towns and cities - higher than Bristol, Southampton, Oxford and Plymouth.

There were 4.15 jobs in the wealth-creating private sector to every job in the public sector, the third best in the UK– a better ratio than Reading, Bristol, Southampton and Oxford.

Swindon has one of the lowest numbers of working age residents with no formal qualification – 3.9% - 60th out of 64 towns and cities.

In 2015, the most recent year for comparative data, Swindon had the fifth highest number of patent applications per 100,000 population – 61.59. This was higher than Southampton’s 27.24, Bristol’s 34.72, Reading’s 40.26, and Slough’s 45.45. Given that all these rival places have at least one university that is pretty good going and shows how innovative our local businesses are, something that we should all applaud.

Nevertheless, this friendly ranking between places does undermine the fact that our town is successful because we are part of a wider network of the UK’s leading towns, cities, and places.

We are members of England’s Economic Heartland, seeking funding to secure transport infrastructure, housing, and employment between England’s two historic university cities – Cambridge and Oxford.

We are part of the South East Strategic Leaders, of which I am vice-chair, through which we campaign for other investment to support economic growth, such as a western rail link to Heathrow.

We are also working closely with Wiltshire Council as part of the Local Economic Partnership to support the town centre regeneration as well as securing funding to improve training and skills.

What does all this mean? It means we have the thriving private sector-led economy without which we would not be able to afford to deliver any of our vital public services.