AHEAD of this week's EU referendum a series of Worcestershire figures have penned pieces for the Worcester News on why Britain should back Remain or Leave.

Here Worcester entrepreneur Neil Westwood, who runs Magic Whiteboard, writes about why Britain should back Leave.

By Neil Westwood

"AS a business family man with two children, Ella and Morely, my wife Laura and myself will be voting to leave the EU.

After carefully analysing the facts and figures we both genuinely believe that our family and business will be better off outside the EU.

It's a positive thing to leave and will give the UK a competitive advantage compared to the bureaucratic and wasteful EU.

We run a successful business in Worcester and make decisions every day by calculating risk.

We believe it is more risky to stay in the European Union.

I would not give control of my business to someone in Brussels and trust them to make sensible decisions about how it is run.

I can make my own decisions in Worcester about how best to grow my business and how to spend my own money.

It costs the UK £10,000 million a year to be a member of the EU. This is a very large number and I struggle to understand why it costs this much.

This would pay for an extra 300,000 nurses or teachers a year on £26,000. This is too much when the UK government is cutting money from the NHS and schools to save money.

In business I have to carefully manage my costs and only spend money if it adds value to the business. I don't think paying £10,000 million a year is good value. We need to spend this money in the UK to create jobs.

We are planning no job losses and have spoken to our customers in France and Germany and they are still going to buy Magic Whiteboard.

Customers buy Magic Whiteboard because they like our goods, they don't buy them because we are a member of the EU. We will still trade with the EU when leave.

UK customers spend billions a year buying German cars and spending money on holidays in Spain, Italy and Greece.

They won't make it more difficult to do business with the UK they want our custom. On 24 June it will be business as usual.

As a small business we trade with 20 countries around the World, 70% outside the EU, 30% inside the EU.

You don't need special trade deals to do business, if someone wants your goods they will buy them and you just send them. It's not complicated.

It is not as rosy and you think in the EU, most countries (excluding the UK and Germany) have miserable levels of growth (most countries outside the EU have higher growth rates than the EU) and unemployment in Greece and Spain is over 30%, it's over 10% in France. In the UK unemployment is 5.4%.

If we stay in the EU we will end up paying more money every year for more bailouts and the UK will end up footing the bill (hard working UK families will end you paying more taxes).

The EU will only reform if we leave, they will be forced to change their wasteful ways because they won't have our £10,000 million to rely on.

On paper the EU sounds like a perfect dream (free movement of people, peace, and stability).

In reality for millions of people it is a nightmare, it have created high unemployment across Europe and it has put too much pressure on the NHS and schools that can't cope with the increase in population.

After we leave the EU, the government can create a business friendly environment to encourage businesses to be based in the UK. By lowering national insurance contributions for businesses and lowering business taxes this will encourage businesses to set up and be based in UK and they will then create jobs.

We are 100% confident that the UK will leave the EU we are challenging all Worcestershire Eurosceptic MPs who are voting Remain to put their money where their mouth is.

Magic Whiteboard will bet each Worcestershire Remain MP, Robin Walker, Harriet Baldwin, Sajid Javid and Mark Garnier £50 each we will leave the EU.

We have chosen £50 because every day the UK pays £50 million to be a member of the EU (I know we get some of this back thanks to Margaret Thatcher's rebate).

Everyone seems to have an opinion and at end on day you have to do what you feel is the right thing to do for you and your family.

We believe the UK will be more prosperous when we leave the EU. Our business and family will be better off.

Whatever you decide please vote, you probably won't get another chance to vote on this in your lifetime."

* We can only lead Europe from within it, says county student