WHILE Herefordshire's greatest assets are its distinctive and beautiful landscapes and high quality of life, it is said to be in urgent need of imaginative and exciting developments to ensure a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come.

This is why the Herefordshire Development Economic Strategy is of vital importance to the future viability and prosperity of the county - and its people.

And the way to achieve this is in the hands of the Herefordshire Partnership, which has a large number of organisations - including the county council, health authorities, chamber of commerce, police and a host of voluntary groups - all referred to as stakeholders.

It has a vision to create fair and thriving communities, to protect the environment and to build a strong, competitive and innovative economy.

While recognising the county faces restraints in supporting the development of large-scale manufacturing businesses and is vulnerable to the loss of existing ones, it did not mean it was not possible to encourage and expect new ones to locate in Herefordshire.

It believes a new approach to economic development and integrating economic, social and environmental elements would enable the county to attract high value and environmentally beneficial growth businesses and entrepreneurs.

Much work is already being done and there is much more to do.

In the end, the partnership wants to create exciting job opportunities and encourage development skills and to offer Herefordshire's many talented young people the chance to be able to stay and live in the county where they were born, and educated.

To monitor progress and to judge its success rate, the partnership has to know its relative starting point and Herefordshire Council has produced a statistical presentation on the state of the county.

It was presented at a meeting of the council's health and partnership committee this week.