A LEADING Worcestershire politician has revealed his deep admiration for people who open their own businesses, despite the "risks" they face.

Cllr Ken Pollock, a cabinet member at Worcestershire County Council, says he is doing all he can to encourage more members of the public to make the "bold step".

The Conservative, a former BBC executive who helped create Top Gear, had a spell running his own company himself as an independent TV producer before winding it up.

He says the county's future economic prosperity depends on more people being prepared to take the plunge.

"We'd like to see more businesses survive, but more importantly we'd like to see more businesses set up," he said.

"The idea you might fail is in the back of the mind of anybody who sets up a business - we all know with restaurants in particular, a huge percentage of those fail in the first three years of opening up.

"Whenever I see one, or any kind of retail outlet, I just admire the courage and the strength of the people who do that, because of the risks they are taking.

"They open the door without knowing who is going to walk through it."

He also said bosses at County Hall are working away to try and make Worcestershire a good environment for entrepreneurs.

"I'd like to think we're a county where people are encouraged to do that, even if there is that possibility of failure within the first three years," he said.

"When I was at the BBC I set up my own limited company, to operate as a consultant as an independent producer.

"I'm not sure whether it was in the first three years or not when I actually wound it down.

"But it wasn't a failure, life changes, it moves on, I didn't need that company any more."

Cllr Pollock, who joined the BBC in 1977, worked alongside Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear in the 1980s and 1990s after helping to hire him as a new presenter.

His comments come after data revealed how entrepreneurs started new companies at a rate of 80 an hour across the country this year.

StartUp Britain, a Government-backed national enterprise campaign, says more than 450,000 were created in the first nine months of this year.

Despite the high-profile collapses of BHS and Austin Reed, the latest victims of high street decline this year, the number of firms going bust is four per cent down on 2015.