Starting a business can seem daunting especially if you’ve been in employment for a long time or are returning to the world of work.
In Diss and Beccles three, free, four hour workshops are available to Suffolk and Norfolk based people who are thinking of being their own boss and starting a business.
The Start Right workshops are let by experienced business trainers and cover a wide range of subjects including, business planning, maarketing a start-up, tax and book keeping.
Funded by the European Regional Development Fund the courses in Beccles and Diss are available now to book on line at
We’re buzzing to welcome Alex Rushto the Beacon IT family! 🎉
Alex joins us as a 1st Line IT Support Engineer, which means he’s now officially one of the friendly humans on the other end of the line when your tech throws a tantrum.
He’s already jumped into the deep end (no floaties needed), helping customers with fast fixes, remote magic, and classic IT conundrums like “Why won’t it print…again?”
To help you get to know Alex a little better, we asked him a few “essential” questions:
💬 What’s your go-to tech tip
for everyday users? 👉 “There’s no such thing as a silly IT
question. But there is such a thing as
wasting an hour on Reddit.”
💬 If you could swap places with any
fictional character for a day, who
would it be and why? 👉 “Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, who
wouldn’t want to be the king of
Gondor for a day?”
💬 What’s one piece of tech you
couldn’t live without? 👉 “A solid keyboard, when typing all day
for a living, you want a keyboard that
is comfortable to type on, without
giving you any discomfort.”
💬 What’s the weirdest IT issue
you’ve ever come across? 👉 “A user swore their PC was
possessed because it kept typing
on its own. Turned out they’d left
a wireless keyboard in their
bag…still connected.”
💬 If you were a biscuit, what
would you be and why? 👉 “A chocolate digestive, simple and
not very flashy, just like me.”
We’re excited to have Alex on board and let’s just say, the helpdesk tea rota has already improved dramatically ☕
NORWICH, Tuesday 19th June 2012 – Norwich International Fire Fighters Sky Dive for Local Charity
Always keen to help a worth cause, Norwich International Airport’s blue watch Fire Fighters, Karl Appleton and Mark Matless will be jumping from an aircraft 13,000ft high at speeds of 120mph and descending 5000ft back to land in just 40 seconds for their sky dive to raise vital funds for one of the airport’s chosen charities this year, the East Anglian Air Ambulance on 28th September 2012.
The East Anglian Air Ambulance now operates two fully medically equipped helicopters (Anglia One and Anglia Two) serving the people of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Between the two helicopters they provide a life saving resource reaching patients quickly and if required, transporting them to the most suitable hospital (rather than the nearest) within minutes.
Karl Appleton said “We work closely with the Air Ambulance team at the airport and see what an invaluable service they provide to the wider communities across the four counties. Hopefully we won’t need them on the day! We couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate cause in the East Anglian Air Ambulance.
Andrew Bell, Chief Executive of Norwich International Airport, said: “Norwich International Airport is proud to support this local charity. Our firemen do a fantastic job of ensuring fire safety at the airport and have stepped up yet again to help raise money for this worthy cause” The East Anglian Air Ambulance relies entirely on independent fundraising and contributions from local businesses and on-going public support is essential to enable this vital service to continue in the region. To sponsor Karl and Mark go to www.justgiving.com/NIAfirefighterskydive
We have an exciting career opportunity for two Apprentice Maintenance Engineers at our Norwich Site. The Briar Apprenticeship will be both rewarding and challenging; whether that be developing practical skills and knowledge during your Training Programme; or working with experienced engineers in a fast-paced manufacturing environment of an Upper Tier COMAH Site; your working day will be interesting and varied.
The Apprenticeship Programme lasts for approximately four years and includes both practical training and further education. During your first year you will undertake off-the-job training at the EEF Training Centre in Birmingham to gain broad-based engineering skills and a BTEC qualification. You will return to site the following year to commence work in the Maintenance Department, building your skills and knowledge to achieve the Level 3 in Mechatronics Maintenance. You will also be required to attend the Birmingham Centre on a block release basis in the second year, to complete your BTEC studies.
Maintenance activities that you will be involved in include:
Operation and maintenance of CHP plant, which includes gas compression, steam generation, electricity generation
Daily and weekly monitoring of plant
Mechanical maintenance on a variety of Process Plant including pumps, vessels, separation equipment, heat exchangers, hydraulic /pneumatic and piping systems
Fault diagnosis, strip down and re-assembly of equipment
Basic electrical work on such items as electric motors and starter circuits
Equipment inspection, computerised report writing and general use of information systems
We set the bar high and our Apprenticeship Programme is no exception, providing the opportunity to gain a range of valuable skills and experiences within the Chemical Industry. As such, first year off-the-job training will take place in Birmingham on EEF’s Residential Apprenticeship Programme where you will be expected to reside at EEF agreed accommodation from Sunday evening until Friday each week.
Prospective candidates should have achieved a minimum of GCSE Grade C or 4 and above in Maths, English and a Science subject. Ideally with a Grade B or 5 in Maths.
If you would like to be considered for this role, please contact Human Resources – email HR.Recruit@briarchemicals.com
Chemistry students were invited to Briar Chemicals to gain a valuable insight into the chemical manufacturing industry and the diverse range of careers opportunities available.
Pupils from Taverham High School, Notre Dame High School and Hellesdon High School joined a team of Chemists at Briar Chemicals for the afternoon, along with their teachers.
Briar’s ‘Insight into Industry’ visits offer a unique chance for students to see how the chemistry they learn at school and college is used in a manufacturing environment. Students are given a tour of working laboratories, production plants and the control rooms and can see how energy is produced by the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and the solar panel installation on site.
Dr Sean Thurston, Royal Society of Chemistry Education Coordinator said: “It really is fantastic to get students and teachers together on an active industrial site like Briar Chemicals. Seeing and hearing first-hand what it is like to work in chemical industry is invaluable when these students make their future career choices. It also allows their teachers to talk to future students more confidently about what local careers are available.”
The ‘Insight into Industry’ events are aimed to inspire pupils to ask questions and learn more about the varied roles of the highly-skilled and qualified Chemists and Engineers working at Briar. It also offers an opportunity for teachers to learn different aspects of chemistry and how to demonstrate new and creative ways of learning. Briar actively encourages its staff to share their knowledge and skills by mentoring.
Tim Green, Site Manager at Briar Chemicals said: “We are passionate about hosting education visits for local students interested in STEM subjects. We have developed excellent relations with teachers and lecturers in the community who visit us year on year, praising our staff for their time.”
Every year Briar Chemicals welcomes a number of work experience students, summer placements and offers a student in industry placement from Loughborough University studying a degree in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering.
A student placement in 2015 recently joined the company as an employee on completion of his Chemistry degree and is now part of the team working on an exciting new project for Briar.
Briar Chemicals and the Royal Society of Chemistry have been working closely for many years; organising yearly student site visits and playing host for the annual Royal Society of Chemistry Top of the Bench Competition.
Briar is proud sponsors of the Norwich Science Festival Chemistry Day and is delighted to continue their support again this year. Working in partnership with Royal Society of Chemistry volunteers, Briar hosted a fun-filled day of experiments – the busiest day of the two week festival welcoming over 1,200 people. The festival welcomed over 75,000 people and looks to build on this success this year with the help of the festival sponsors.
Wednesday 7th June saw the official launch of the fully merged and newly formed Brown&Co Architecture + Planning Division at an event held at Cinema City in Norwich
As Brown&Co Architecture + Planning launches, the team has more than doubled in size from that which joined the business in 2013* and now consists of 4 Chartered Architects, a Master Planner, 2 Chartered Architectural Technologists, 3 Chartered Planners and an incredibly capable and professional support team. The practice carries out a range of small and large scale housing developments, one off bespoke properties, school projects and commercial developments in addition to strong rural and conversion projects which have historically been carried out.
The wider firm sees this as a growth area for the business and the department has developed considerably over the last 3 years with specific Architecture + Planning teams in place in the Norwich and Huntingdon offices, with a future expansion planned. This ensures coverage across East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and beyond.
Fraser Hall, who leads the division commented “Norfolk, and Norwich in particular, has a strong architectural history and pedigree and there are many practices carrying out excellent work across the city, county and further afield. Our aspiration is to make Brown&Co Architecture and Planning a household name in the region, building on the expertise, skills and tradition we have”. ‘We are looking forward to a bright future developing this dynamic practice.’ Added Mr Hall
Henry Cockerton of chartered surveyors “Cockertons” in Holt, has joined Brown&Co as a partner from 1st July 2017. Henry, together with Tim Nicholson will join the existing team of Tom Cator and Vicky Coleman in a combined office in the heart of Holt. Over the past few years Cockertons has become the foremost independent firm of Chartered Surveyors and Property Consultants in north Norfolk. Henry Cockerton commented “As this area continues to grow into one of the region’s most important and sought-after destinations for land and property we feel the support and backing of a firm of Brown & Co’s stature and reputation will enable us to continue to provide the best service to our existing clients and expand together as one of the region’s largest firms of Independent Chartered Surveyors and Property Consultants”.
Charles Whitaker, Managing Partner of Brown&Co said “We are delighted to bring Tim and Henry into the Brown&Co business and to welcome Henry as a young and highly regarded professional to the partnership. The acquisition of the Cockertons practice and merger of our existing Holt residential office with Henry’s business will create growth for us collectively in Holt and a strong, multi-disciplinary professional practice in the heart of the region.” Henry Cockerton added “In this part of the world the names Brown & Co and Cockertons have been synonymous with expert advice and unrivalled knowledge in the field of land and property advice for decades and Tim and I are delighted to be moving forward together.”
We have just launched our new ecommerce website design and build service to help companies take advantage of the massive growth in online shopping. The new platform allows bespoke design and has a very long shopping list of ecommerce features to allow our clients to have highly effective and usable shopping sites.
Bigfork can also provide digital marketing services to help increase profitable traffic to your online shop through SEO, email marketing, social media and PPC campaigns.
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You can also download our ecommerce pack below which has full details. To see more examples check out our ecommerce portfolio.
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The Brown&Co Summer property auction took place on Thursday 22nd June at The Assembly Rooms in Norwich.
In a packed auction room, there was plenty of bidding and garages, cottages, properties in need of renovation, land and larger properties all sold very well. Fifteen of the 16 lots were sold at auction, with the other lot selling immediately afterwards and in many cases the results were well in excess of the guide prices and reserves set. There were many highlights and the wide variety of property in all price ranges demonstrates activity across the board and that despite difficulties in the country, the market is buoyant in the region with plenty of demand from buyers. A key highlight of the sale was a four bedroom house in Stratford Crescent, Cringleford which sold for £100,000 over the reserve and amenity land with potential in Newton St Faith also exceeded expectations.
“We now look forward to our autumn sale with a spring in our step and as always, hope to be able to help colleagues with any suitable properties” said auctioneer Peter Hornor from the Norwich office. “Do please contact either myself or Trevor Blythe or anyone in the Norwich office if you want to know more about how auctions can work for you”, he added.
The next auction will be held at The Assembly Rooms in Norwich on Thursday 28th September 2017.
In close collaboration with the design and development teams at Vaccoda Design, we are glad to announce that we are working on Radiant Kitchen’s website. Radiant Kitchens are a North London kitchen showroom and experts in fitting a wide range of kitchens and relevant installations, based in Enfield. Mixing high quality kitchens and excellent customer service, they have built up a loyal and admirable customer base across not just North London, but Greater London as a whole.
We were approached by Radiant Kitchens as they were not seeing much online exposure and therefore business. they have a WordPress supported website that looks and feels sleek and easy. However, they found themselves increasingly on the fringes of the kitchen industry. A very competitive area, Radiant Kitchens’ approach has been to look at the targeting of local searches and pushing specific products that they offer.
An advantage that the team at Radiant Kitchens have is that unlike many other companies with websites, theirs is not in a dire position and rather than having previously undertaken black-hat Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), negatively impacting their online presence, they have simply not ever undergone any significant SEO work until working with us.
What we Have Done So Far
Since starting a few months ago with Radiant Kitchens and the teams at Vaccoda Design we have implemented and upgraded a number of SEO aspects that needed attention. This has included optimising their meta titles, meta descriptions and alt-texts. Having had their meta data cleaned up for the benefit of search engines, Radiant Kitchens’ website is easier for Google and others to crawl [read] and rank. Furthermore, as a website with a large visual element to what they do; selling and showcasing kitchens and related products Google Image Search is crucial to what they do. By optimising and updating all of their website’s alt-text tags, their visual elements are now available on Google Image results.
We have also undertaken a link strategy of two elements. Initially, we removed all spammy links from their backlink profile to ensure all referring links are clean and Google and SEO-friendly. This has included removing them from several spammy directories and link-farms. By cleaning up their backlink profile, the site is afforded a higher level of credibility and is deemed as ‘genuine’ and ‘reliable,’ having only undertaken white hat, clean SEO.
We have also embarked on a structured content strategy. This includes ensuring their main services and products, such as Siemens Kitchen Appliances have their own dedicated pages of content-rich information and SEO-friendly practices. Furthermore, additional services and supplementary products for kitchens such as hot taps and others are important. This has entailed extensive keyword research to understand user data and keyword volumes to inform our overall targeting.
The Results
Radiant Kitchens are still in the early stages of their SEO campaign and much of the ‘big’ results are yet to manifest as Google crawls and re-ranks the site accordingly. However, Radiant Kitchens have already found themselves pushed up to the first position on Google for ‘Kitchens in Enfield,’ allowing them to capture their local area.
We look forward to continuing the work with radiant Kitchens together with the teams at Vaccoda Design.
Local recruitment specialists The Recruiting Office have unveiled improved branding as they embark on an exciting new strategy to continue their growth.
The refresh of their brand marks the start of their new marketing strategy to target local businesses. “We already attract many high-calibre candidates” says Neil Scarborough, Managing Director. “We simply want to reach more businesses and help them fill their roles with staff that last”.
The Recruiting Office approached a number of local marketing agencies. “Full Mix Marketing gave us the greatest confidence” says Neil. “Rather than recommending we change everything, they explained how we could improve our existing marketing to get stronger results”.
The evolution of The Recruiting Office’s brand and strapline signal a stronger emphasis on what they deliver best. “Having many long-term clients, we simply focus on doing a great job” adds Neil. “Our new brand demonstrates our professionalism and shows we understand what clients value most. Full Mix Marketing have helped us realise our five-stage vetting process goes further than our competitors and is something we need to shout about”.
Established in 2013, The Recruiting Office specialise in finding permanent and temporary staff for office, transport and manufacturing roles. With over 30 years combined experience, they’ve developed a reputation for being the go-to recruitment partner for many local businesses.
Over the coming months, Full Mix Marketing will be helping The Recruiting Office to deliver a comprehensive strategy of digital and offline marketing. “Like many professional and B2B businesses, The Recruiting Office know who their target customers are” says Sarah West, Managing Director of Full Mix Marketing. “Our role is to help them deliver the most cost-effective marketing to reach and convert them”.
Full Mix Marketing provide all the marketing businesses need to grow, including marketing plans and strategies, branding, full digital and social media marketing, as well as direct marketing campaigns and advertising.
The Recruiting Office discovered Full Mix Marketing through a Chamber event. “Yet again being members of Norfolk Chamber has been very positive for both of us” says Sarah. “It remains a strong part of the marketing mix we recommend our B2B clients”.
We are thrilled to reveal the shortlist for the Social Economy Awards 2025, a celebration of the people and organisations driving forward social change, innovation, and impact across the UK.
The Awards form part of the Social Economy Drive 2025 (17th – 21st November), a week-long programme of events showcasing the strength, creativity, and diversity of our social economy. From grassroots enterprises to sector leaders, this year’s finalists represent the very best of a movement that continues to transform communities and improve lives.
The winners will be revealed at a Black Tie Gala Dinner on:
📍 Anchor Point, Birmingham 📅 Thursday 20th November 2025 ⏰ From 6:00 PM
As part of Social Economy Drive 2025, the Social Economy Showcase Conference & Expo will bring together social enterprises, co-operatives, charities, funders, and supporters from across the UK.
It’s a unique opportunity to:
Promote your organisation by booking a stand
Network with peers, investors, and policy makers
Discover innovation and best practice shaping the future of the sector
Whether you are a finalist, a supporter, or simply passionate about the social economy, the Showcase is the place to connect, collaborate, and celebrate.