HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) statistics reveal that companies in the East of England accounted for 10% of 22,445 research and development tax credits claims in the tax year 2014-15, with HMRC paying back £250m to companies in the region, out of £2.45bn of tax relief paid out nationwide.
But tax specialist Jumpstart says that many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still unaware they could claim back thousands in Corporation Tax from the Government.
The firm says the figures show that the East is lagging behind other regions in terms of the increase in claims by SMEs over the last five years. Since 2010, the amounts claimed by SMEs in the East have increased by 198%, compared with 438% in the North East at 438% and 364% in London.
Chapter 64 of the UK Trade Tariff is where you will find nearly 90 commodity codes used on the import or export offootwearin the UK.
Classification is aone of the 3 key elements whichdefine the amount of duty that is paid on import and as footwear attracts duty rates between 5 & 17%getting it wrong could prove costly.
Applying the correct commodity code requires a greater understanding of the article of footwear. In order to confirm an accurate classification you will need to knowwhat materialit is made from, who will be wearing it, whether the shoe is for use in sportwhether it is, a wellington, a flip flop, or wornfor health & safety purposes.Tthe height of a heel and length of sole are also determining factors in shoe classification& whether the item covers the ankle or knee or whether if it is used for sport.
All of this can be daunting for the fist time importer or the seasoned professional so we at IEShave designed a tool to assist you with the classification of footwear and where the classification is still unclear (which can happen for new innovativefootwear designs) we can then assist with the submission of a Binding Tariff Infromation sheet to HMRC which will give you a decision as to the classification of the footwear.
We are excited to be working with Western Circle, technology & data oriented lending company. The company develops and integrates technologies to enable affordable loans online under FCA regulation. The technologies faciliated include underwriting expert systems, online loan intelligence analytic and proactive compliance management systems.
WCL has already helped over 4,000 people in the UK alone to obtain affordable loans online, through the use of pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO).
Our contact at Western Circle explained: “We are using our technology to faciliate easy quick loans whilst maintaining transparency and compliance in a very competitive industry. The power of our technology is to assign the user’s details with the best financial product for them, giving them the highest chance of approval and keeping their data and security safe.”
Our Contribution
We have been assisting Western Circle through traditional online marketing methods. This includes conducting keyword research to find hundreds and thousands of long-tail key phrases that they can target through PPC and SEO and we have helped them create content for these pages too, optimised with meta-data, headings, keywords, internal links, images and more.
Trying to get up the search results for online finance products is always challenging so keeping content clean and consistent (never duplicated) and using clean link building techniques is helping achieve our goals. This means not using directories, paid submissions or reciprocal links (I link to you and you link to me strategies).
We are now helping the company maintain a strong position in the market, especially with upcoming changes in data protection (GDPR). We must ensure that the site is fully compliant and has clear details of what data can be stored and how it is used for each individual customer.
For starters, you might look a little confused whilst you make sure that you are in fact in the right log file, but then you knuckle down and find out what the issue is and how you can fix it.
I was faced with the above problem very recently and I can tell you, it’s a bit of a pain to solve sometimes. To add a bit of context, a client sent us an email saying that they had tried to run a piece of functionality on some software we are developing for them and had been given the typical “Sorry, an error has occurred” message on their page. That’s okay, in development sometimes bugs come up that we need to fix. I take a stroll into the server logs, expecting to see the error and have a quick fix for it. What do I find? Nothing, actually. Nothing that relates to the error, anyway. Rewind back to the first section of this post about looking a little confused for a while, that was me.
After realising that I probably wasn’t going to get anywhere looking at the server logs, I decided to fire up a development instance of the project, retrace the steps the client made and find the error message there instead. Because of the UI not being completely finished, it took quite some time to follow the steps (as it is a case of clicking checkboxes and adding values to arrays, more on that later) but alas, I got to the stage of being ready to submit the form. I hit submit, and the age old error message pops up. This time, however, we get the error message in the log. Progress.
Looking at the error message, I see that it is complaining about the index of my array of data. Any time the index goes over 256, the error is thrown (I had to check this by assuring 255 values went into the array first, then 256, then 257. It took time.).
So after discovering the problem, a quick Google Search and a StackOverflow question lead me to a quick solution to my problems. It turns out that Spring (view my other post about Spring and Spring Boothere) sets the default max index of an array to 256 and to override this, you need to add in a short function. Seems easy enough, and it was actually. A few lines of code and another test of the functionality and it just worked.
After celebrating my victory of conquering the error with no output, I realised that this problem was probably the same problem we were having with another system we were creating. This too had a large array of values that we were trying to create.
I confirmed the error message was the same, added in the same function that had fixed my first problem, tested it and found that it too had been fixed.
After feeling like I had accomplished greatness, I checked in my changes and went on my merry way. In the process, I learned that through a bit of trial and error, you can often find solutions to even the strangest of problems. You might even hit two birds with one stone.
When the weather turns to temperatures like we are currently experiencing, it will drive rodents into buildings such as sheds, factories, schools, workshops, houses and garages. You name it and they will find a way in. This week is ‘Pest Awareness Week’ and it was reported by the British Pest Control Authority (BPCA) that the insurance sector has estimated rodent damage to wiring is responsible for 25% of all electrical fires in buildings. If this is not a big enough concern on its own, think about the opportunity you will give them to share your food stocks, probably without you even noticing it. Make sure you check for all entry points, broken drain covers, poorly maintained brickwork and get the maintenance completed. When the thaw arrives over the next few days we will be inundated with a surge of calls and the Abate team will be ready with all hands-on deck. For Health & Safety reasons for all Abate staff, they have been told to stay at home for the third day running, but will be ready when needed? Abate Pest Management from Morley near Wymondham, delivers rodent control, insect control, bird proofing projects, woodworm treatment and specialist hygiene services to commercial and domestic customers throughout Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Herts and Beds. They offer free surveys and can be contacted at www.abateltd.co.uk or by calling 0800 980 9767.
We talk to hundreds of local business owners every day; we hear their concerns, understand their challenges and share in their successes.
One common conversation is that, in the digital age, advertising is complicated and it can be hard to see any return on investment.
Some concerning research shows that 46% of business owners don’t actually know if their marketing strategies work – and that is a worrying point.
The ad industry has tried to solve this challenge by creating lots of new products.
The small business owner can now buy an ad in the newspaper, on a website, a newsletter and even an app for almost every newspaper that exists… but how does the business owner understand if any of it works?
It’s as if the ad industry has become so inured to the idea of technology, tools and twiddly buttons that we have somewhat forgotten what ‘advertising’ and ‘marketing’ are for.
The fact that businesses want customers, and advertising that delivers measurable effect is a challenge that our industry is now coming to terms with.
Advertising is now at a sort of crossroads and the advertising industry is starting to take its head from the sand and choosing a direction.
Here at Archant we have launched Local Impact, created to deliver the small business owner insight into the digital and traditional advertising market, advice and support to build a marketing strategy and products and services designed to best enable a business to sell its product or service.
We aim to support the business owners with advice, practical help and products that deliver a measurable effect.
As Local Impact grows I will share what we are doing, how it is working and deliver as much practical advice and help as I can in 350 words.
If any of you have questions or topics that you would like discussed do get in touch. My email is always on and I almost always read it…
Did you know that ‘How do I promote my business?’ is searched 880 times on Google every month in the UK? This means that there are a lot of business owners out there that need some help. These business owners, who have busy day jobs, are probably experts in their field but when it comes to marketing they just need a helping hand… Sound familiar? So where do you start? Firstly, the most important thing is working out what you realistically want to achieve. All of us would like a million customers tomorrow, obviously, however the reality is that few of us could handle that level of custom and even fewer could afford the investment to achieve it. So for the sake of ease, say by the end of the year, you simply want to be making 10 more sales each month. To market your product or service effectively you must plan out your customer journey. Plan to make potential customers aware of you, be the expert they find when they are doing research, be the standout business when they are comparing companies to buy from and then (the important bit) convert them into a customer for life. This is obviously a fairly big subject – if you have a look at our website at www.archantlocalimpact.co.uk, you will find out more detail on this planning stage and even some video of yours truly explaining what goes into an effective marketing plan (hopefully without too much waffle). We feel now, more than ever before, that there is a real need from businesses to fully understand and effectively reach their customers. Next time I will focus on the challenge at the start of the process – building brand awareness for a small business. In the meantime if you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in touch. Contact Archant Local Impact on 03331 365390, hello@archantlocalimpact.co.uk or at www.archantlocalimpact.co.uk
Landlords and tenants quite frequently enter into side letters (supplemental to the lease) to reflect particular arrangements between them. Side letters can include rent concessions where the landlord might, for example, agree to accept a lower rent than that specified in the lease. It is relatively common practice for a landlord to specify in such a case that if the tenant breaches a condition of the concession or a term of the lease then the concession given to the tenant will be cancelled. The property industry was taken by surprise recently in a case concerning a concessionary rent where the tenant was late in paying an instalment. In that case the Court decided that the landlord’s attempt to bring the concession to an end (so as to revert to the higher rent referred to in the lease) was void on the basis that it amounted to a “penalty”. The Court referred to a recent decision of the Supreme Court which reviewed the law relating to penalties. Previously, a penalty might broadly have been described as a payment specified as being due by a party in breach of contract which was not a genuine pre-estimate of the innocent party’s loss arising as a result of the breach. The decision of the Supreme Court suggests that rather than being focused on whether a sum payable on breach is a genuine pre-estimate of loss (i.e. a liquidated damages clause), there is now a more general test as to whether the sum or remedy stipulated as a result of breach of contract is exorbitant or unreasonable in the circumstances. Against this background, one can understand that if a side letter states that a remedy for the landlord following a breach by the tenant is to cancel the concession itself then the tenant might seek to argue that the remedy is exorbitant or unconscionable. The law remains complex and each individual case will depend, amongst other things, on how the individual side letter is drafted and construed. The reality, however, is that a landlord will no longer have the guaranteed ability to cancel a concession or other term of a side letter in the tenant’s favour purely because the side letter states that such remedy is available to the landlord.Landlords must be mindful of this when negotiating any side letters which include concessions.
Despite opinions from some quarters, the construction industry is necessarily an extremely highly skilled area, with specialists in almost every niche area you can think of. Those skills range from concept, design and planning at the outset of a project, myriad trades and professions during a built, through to maintenance and repair throughout the lifetime of a building. Fortunately, England has moved on from the medieval system of Guilds and Liveries to control the skills in the construction industry, and we now have excellent organisations such as the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to provide training. I know some have criticised the organisation in the past (particularly those organisations who have to pay the levy), but anyone who has been through an apprenticeship with their help, gained employment or managed to get a promotion from skills or qualifications obtained from CITB will be very grateful. It was therefore very sad to read about the plan to reduce the workforce of CITB by 900 staff. The Vision 2020: Business Plan 2018-21 shows a reduction in staff from 1,370 currently down to 484 in 2020/2021. With 575 based in Norfolk, in particular at the Bircham Newton (North West Norfolk, between Fakenham and Hunstanton) site, that is going to mean some very sad job losses locally. Its head office will remain there until 2019, but after that is likely to move, possibly to Peterborough.
Another year and another barrage of Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals have come and gone. We have no doubt that your inboxes were flooded by a deluge of offers to entice you to part with your hard-earned cash. But how about from a marketing perspective? Is the Black Friday weekend, Friday through to Monday as big an opportunity for retailers as it appears to be for consumers? Many retailers begrudgingly cut their margins and offer site-wide discounts that they typically wouldn’t want to offer. Is it a case of being left out in the cold if you don’t participate? I would put forward that the answer to that final question is no.
<h4 ve already got your marketing strategies in place, right?
And just when you thought the Black Friday deals were over, some incredibly kind retailers extend their offers by a further 24 hours! Was this all part of the marketing strategy or is it a genuine act of kindness from the retailers? The answer is the former.
How does your business stand out against its competition? In life we can be certain of death and taxes, in business we can also be certain of competition (some businesses do also get away with the whole tax thing). I am sure that there are businesses out there with competitors offering the same service, the same expertise and sometimes even the exact same product. Potential customers also don’t have to go that far to find the competition as Google does such a good job of bringing them all together in search results. In order to stand out when people are comparing businesses, a business needs all of its marketing ducks in a row. It needs a strong and recognisable brand, it needs visibility online with great continuity between its website and social media. A business needs to give potential customers a great experience from beginning to end. On top of all of this, though, a business needs to know when (and how) to make an offer their potential customers can’t refuse. One really good tip is to only make an offer to people who are interested in what you do, and to make the offer specific. What I mean by this is only show your 10% off widgets offer to people who have been on the widget page of your website, only send the ‘buy one get one free’ offer to people who have downloaded your widget brochure, and so on. It might sound obvious but an offer is much more effective if it is made to an audience of interested people. PPC adverts, email marketing, online display retargeting, direct mail and even digital geo fencing are all ways a business can get its offer to these super responsive people. Using these delivery methods with a great offer is an excellent way of standing out from the crowd right at the point a potential customer is choosing who to buy from. It sounds simplistic but this approach does work. If you are interested in understanding the detail of how we do this check out our website, in particular the page titled ‘How do you stand out against your competition?’
Welcome to our Youth in Tech issue – just in time for the new term! It was no coincidence that our August issue is all about younger developers, but we’ve also included articles about how it is important to never stop learning, even when we might think we know everything! The world of tech is always evolving, sometimes it feels difficult to keep up with new developments and technologies. It’s important to spend some time investing in ourselves and staff to make sure we keep abreast of this ever-changing sector. We hear from Luminous PR and netmatters about the importance of learning in their articles. Of course it wouldn’t really be a Youth Issue without the view of an actual young developer, and we knew just the chap. Teenager James kindly gave us his opinion on the best bits of being into technology and where he thinks the future of development will be and student developers Emily and David were also kind enough to give us a developers view of their university project ‘Theia’, which aims to use machine learning to help students. On the lighter side of things developer Adam sent us an amusing code piece (just try not to spit your tea while reading!) and we were also lucky enough to have an insider view from the recent Apple conference in San Jose, California, so if you’ve ever wondered what actually happens inside Apple, see inside! Download now: https://www.norfolkdevelopers.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/norDEVmagazine-201808-e05.pdf