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Is your computer room over heating?

The wrong kind of leaves falling on a railway track. Snow arriving ‘unexpectedly’ in January. It doesn’t take much to send the UK’s critical infrastructure ‘off the rails’, so brace yourself for the 2013 Summertime meltdown!

Temperatures in Central London and within the M25 hit 31.4C over the weekend and the heat wave is expected to continue for at least another week, with some reports suggesting another month. Motorists on Sunday faced disruption when a section of the M25 was closed after the road melted and commuters were getting very hot and bothered when there were severe delays at London Waterloo because the heat has caused a rail to buckle. At least in this internet-connected age commuters can work remotely and access their email and applications from home – that is unless the company server or computer rooms melts down too!

Hot Summer The last very hot summer was back in 2003. Since then, computer rooms and data centres have been filling up with more and more equipment adding to the heat produced. Many companies have also started the move towards virtualisation, buying ever more powerful servers that produce more heat. Moving to blade servers is also becoming commonplace in many computer rooms and data centres and for good reason. They are more efficient, saving money and improve a company’s ‘green’ credentials. However, they do produce a lot of heat in a small area which will be a problem if there is insufficient cooling to cope with a hot summer.

Careful consideration must be given to siting any new equipment, especially in an older facility which doesn’t fully follow computer room and data centre design best practice.

Try NOT to keep it together! When choosing a suitable place to install, look for the best location with regard to cooling. Don’t try to keep all finance servers together, or all HR servers together! Spread the load.

Start planning now! Look at your facility.

In the meantime do you have a robust BCP/DR plan in case your data centre or computer room doesn’t survive the heat wave? If not, then we can also help. Make the business aware of the potential problems now, and explain the consequences of not taking action. No modern business should be in a position where a few hot days can put the whole business at risk by losing essential systems, email or phone – even for a few hours. This is all very well, but when the high temperatures hit it’s too late to start redesigning the room!

Marketers are not the only people that use the letter “P” as part of an acronym. Philip Kotler’s 4P’s of marketing certainly has its place when considering events but the more salient acronym where exhibiting is concerned might be the rather lengthier 7P’s that people in the military use: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Whether you are a seasoned exhibitor or undertaking your first exhibition, the above applies. The best exhibitors constantly address their success and failings every time they attend an event and refine their offering to ensure the best opportunity. Others just turn up. The start point for most things in business has a lot to do with price and, given the significant cost of exhibiting (see my last article on this), getting the best value for money, for what is often the largest single marketing cost, is important. Here’s something to consider.

Exhibition organisers seem to follow a similar stand pricing structure to many airlines in the way that they charge for space at their exhibitions (dynamic pricing). If you are thinking of attending an annual event and decide that you will attend next year’s event you may be able to negotiate a discount on the published rate while at the previous show, just paying a securing deposit. It’s a real feather in the organiser’s cap to announce that X% of the next year’s show space is already booked in their promotional material. Shortly after the show you may still get a discount but for a considerable period between shows the pricing seems to stay put. It is only in the run up to the next show that pricing becomes a little more flexible but beware. Just as with airlines where you may not have the ideal seat if booking late, so a show may not have the ideal stand for you, in the best location, with the best footfall, etc.

This type of thinking, from the organisers, is also something that should be foremost in your thinking when attending shows and it is also something that I could have done better in the past: plan for what happens after the show. You may spend many weeks getting the stand right, the promotion perfect and the people prepped and ready for any eventuality but after the show we all exhale and relax. Thinking about it, though, this is when we should be getting fired up – this period, after the show, is the whole point! Just as the organisers are ready for opportunities both at the show and shortly thereafter to capitalise on the “buzz” of the show and sell next years’s stand space so you should be ready with a plan, at and immediately post-show to capitalise on any opportunities that arise from meetings at the show.

So, lesson one in your planning ought to be not to just prepare for your company’s attendance at the show but to get ready for all eventualities post-show. Once you have decided that and made your best efforts at anticipating your stand visitor’s needs and how you are going to follow up leads and what materials you will need, you can now go back to the stand and concentrate on how you might be represented at the show.

There is a myriad of questions that need answering before the show but first it’s important to get your internal settings right. The best planning structure I have been involved with started 12 weeks before the show date. However, the nature of your products and services may dictate otherwise, depending on lead times for presenting certain products or materials on the stand. My experience relates to professional services rather than complex engineering needs so adjust accordingly.

Getting a good handle

At the 12 week point a team of three of us blocked out diaries for at least an hour a week with the first three weeks allowing two hours per week. Why three people? Well, we wanted a representative from the sales team, one from marketing and all-importantly, the CEO. This might be someone who has a different title in your company but is basically a person who can allocate funds and leads the direction of the business. If all of these three people is you, I would suggest that you make sure that you have a team of three whether drawn from inside the company or outside contacts, paid or otherwise. One to lead and the others to provide constructively critical and creative input into suggestions and to advise on what might be practically possible within the given resources. It is all too easy to let the planning slip in the face of competing demands for time but if you have decided to exhibit, the least you can do is give yourself the best shot at it. Many years ago I wrote a note in my journal, after an initial set-up meeting, along the lines of, “I have two days to turn £20k into £120k!” There’s a wizard’s hat doodle next to it! It sounds like something “The Apprentice” might concoct but the reality is that at an annual event, that £120k has to come in before the next event and the provenance of sales has to clearly identify the event as the conception or turning point. Having got your team assembled then there are ten key questions to agree specific answers to, to get the ball rolling:

• Why are we exhibiting at this event – what can we expect, gain, measure?
• Who is attending this event – what customers and prospects are we likely to connect with?
• What do we need to look like to get attention?
• What are we going to do to let our customers (lapsed and current), prospects and targets know we are there?
• What opportunities are there to raise our profile above others exhibiting?
• What are we going to show and talk about to get visitors interested?
• Do we have a response for anticipated enquiries? (and unanticipated?)
• What are we going to do post-event – do we have a system and resources in place?
• Who is going to represent us at the event – what do they need (Training? Resources?)
• What are the measures of success?

For each of those ten questions there are least another ten to answer to get a good handle on your exhibiting – suddenly those 12 weeks and 15 meeting hours, above, look a bit light, don’t they? If, at this point, you don’t have any form of CRM system, perhaps you should. Whether it’s a spreadsheet of customers, prospects and targets or a bespoke system, your exhibiting efforts and the measurement of your success will be much clearer because of it.

In the next article, I’ll talk about the stand itself, some of the howlers I’ve seen and what to do and not do to give yourself the best chance of success at an exhibition. Given that £30k spent on a two-day exhibition with about six contact hours per day equates to about £40 per minute (roughly what a private jet costs to rent), it’s probably best not to just turn up.

Four reasons summer is the perfect time to start saving energy.

• Warmer weather.Have your heating and ventilation system serviced while you’re not using it and make sure your system will be running as efficiently as possible through the winter. The more efficient the heating and ventilation system is, the more money you should save.
• Longer days.More daylight means your lighting costs are lower. Invest the money you save on new energy efficient light fittings. Get a lighting assessment from an accredited energy surveyor to ensure you get a good payback period. Any NICEIC registered electrical contractor qualified to 17th Edition BS7671 should be able to advise you.
• You can retrofit after hours.Business downtime is unaffordable in the current economic climate. It’s hard to take a break – not even for energy efficiency upgrades. That means retrofitting out of trading hours. Retrofitting out of hours can run expensive in the winter, as artificial lighting and heating must be provided in order to complete complex projects. Fortunately, extra daylight in summer means businesses can retrofit cheaply as well as safely. However expensive summer projects look, you can bet they’re cheaper than their winter equivalents.
• It’s a chance to develop long-term energy strategies.Energy prices are going to continue creeping up, so energy efficiency should be a priority for your business. It’s easy to view things like air conditioning inspections and EPC assessments as unnecessary red tape, but they can form the basis of your energy management strategy and help your business make savings no matter how much the energy market fluctuates.

Mobile. It’s here now and you need to be ready.Your customer is on the move, with little patience. They want sites that load, with easy press buttons. They haven’t time to think. They’re distracted and contacting you on their mobile is just one of their pressing activities.

Don’t give them time to think. Make it easy on their challenges. How? Simple.

• Give them a site that loads quickly • Present them with easy to read info • Design great call to action buttons that makes contacting you a no-brainer • Step too far? Not worth it? I don’t think so…

Look at your competitors. Do they have a mobile site? – look at their website on your smartphone.

Don’t waste any more time researching, doing surveys, considering. Every week that you aren’t into mobile your website isn’t doing what it should. It may be slow, hard to read, confusing, requiring pinch and zoom.

Don’t be so precious about your site that you aren’t ready embracing change . Here’s the bottom line. For a relatively small outlay, as part of a mobile marketing plan, your business could be reaching new customers. You may never get back those customers disappointed by a slow load or overwhelming info.

Streamline, sift in, re-write it and condence your stuff. It’s surprising how much you can still say in few words if you choose the right ones.

If you don’t have a mobile optimised site you’re not saying much about your business. But trust me. Potential customers are sharing news like wildfire.

Developing a range of channels that encourage, value and reward engagement will pay dividends for your business.

Sending customers to a location based QR code has many rewards. You have the power to alert them to their favourite range of products, gear your messaging to their particular preferences, or give them an immediate offer to whet their appetite!

Remember – your consumer is already highly distracted when they’re on their mobile. You are not the centre of their world, so any graphics you use need to have high impact to get their attention.

If you’re thinking of a QR code for your promotions, go one step further and opt for a custom, colour one. Why?

Many people are sceptical about scanning black and white codes as they come with no branding and there’s rarely any indication from the retailer of the destination, prior to scan.

A custom colour one brands you beautifully. You can change the destination when you choose, and so change your mind on how you use it.

You’ve a great advantage here over black and white as the colour is already associated with your brand and designing a QR code around your logo really cements the idea of your brand and QR code as one integral marketing message.

Your thoughtfulness won’t be lost on your prospective customer. They’ll be more inclined to scan as they know they’re going somewhere you recommend – and as they already trust you as a source of permission marketing, your custom colour QR will have greater results.

QR Codes will be out and about this summer during the GoGoGorillas trail. You’ll see black and white ones unlocking codes within the trail app and a few custom colour ones – destination sponsor’s web pages.

Which ones have the higher returns? That depends on their purpose and placement.

Look out for them and consider how you could use them in your marketing.

In general terms a ‘bounce’ is where an email has reached your recipients mail server and the mail server has sent a message back to inform you that it hasn’t been delivered.

There are a whole range of reasons as to why a bounce occurs. However they are split in to two types of bounce a hard bounce and a soft bounce.

What is a soft bounce?

A soft bounce is where an email address does exist but it has not made it into their inbox.

What is a hard bounce?

A hard bounce is where your recipients email address doesn’t exist or if their mail server has blocked you.

Should I do anything when an email bounces?

A good email marketing system willhandle your bounces automatically so you do not need to worry about sending to email addresses that you now know no longer exist. HoweverIt is a good idea to keep your own database up to date with this information too.You may like to keep an eye on your bouncesas customer could be missing out on your communications! A quick phone call to check their email address can get your messages in front of them.

Facebook recently announced that they are adopting #hashtags to enable their users to easily find and join threads of conversation.

Hashtags have been used on Twitter for years as a handy way to access threads of conversation. Facebook have announced that they have added #Hashtags to their offering and are starting with a sensible approach of just making #hashtags clickable. They have also said that they will be adding more features in due course such as trending hashtags.

If you use a #hashtag or set of #hashtags on twitter you can now apply this to your marketing on Facebook too, simply add your #hashtags to your status updates.

Facebook are not currently permitting sponsored #hashtags or the ability to target people who use specific #hashtags but we suspect this is likely to change so watch this space!

Take a look at ourfacebook pageto see how we are using #hashtags

If you would like to discuss Social Media and get some expert advice about how you can use it for your business call us on 01603 858250 and speak to one of the team.

#ThanksForReading

TechRadar have given it a 4/5 score.

They say in tablets, the big guns have big names. Apple has its iPad 4 and Google has the Nexus 10. And, if Microsoft is to take on the might of Apple and Google in the tablet space with Windows 8, it needs a big name of its own.Microsoft Surface is the poster boy for Windows RT too, the brand-new version of Windows 8 designed for ARM.Other Windows RT tablets and hybrids are available click here to read more.

So what’s all the hype and what do we here at React think?

Alan says: My initial thoughts are I liked it as a business tool more so than the iPad. That’s mainly because of the Office Apps which I use all the time in my everyday business functions, using Windows 8. However I thought the IE(internet explorer) app was a little cumbersome at times to use. I also found the use of orientation not as good as the iPad but then I suppose iPad have been doing it for longer, other users have told me they find the G-Sensor to be overly sensitive when holding the tablet cradled in portrait, often triggering a rotation to landscape when they don’t mean to. What I did like however about the Windows Surface is the fact you can buy a cable and connect it to your TV and therefore it’s ideal for video’s and presentations, I also liked the keyboard complete with flip out stand which made it much easier on the lap.

Richard says: I agree with Alan, I too liked the keyboard. Personally I prefer the iPad from a touch screen perspective however to use Microsoft products like Office you can only do that with the Surface. I do think when/if they bring the full Microsoft Office ensemble to the iPad that would be my preferred device.

Francis says: I thought on first trial the Surface had a more widescreen feel to it than the iPad. It’s also slightly heavier but the screen does seem to have a higher resolution making images sharper and videos viewed in better quality. I don’t think it feels quite as intuitive as the iPad though, however there’s always the temptation to jump to conclusions having used an iPad first you can get caught thinking ‘it’s not doing it like the iPad does’ rather than just using a different devise and not making the comparison. If you are wanting to create documents and spreadsheets then the Surface would be the way to go as the Office applications are much better. I also like the ‘proper’ keyboard facility especially when using drop down menus on a website. On the downside there are no where near as many apps for the Surface so you don’t have that ‘oh there’s an app for that’ feeling about it.

Our conclusion Click here https://www.reactcp.co.uk/2013/04/30/windows-surface-whats-all-the-hype/ for our overall summary of the iPad v’s Surface

For’s and Against’s As voted for by TechRadar See what TechRadar thought were its strengths and weaknessesSource: James Stables of TechRadar.com

We’d love to hear your views – email us at francis@reactcp.co.uk Until next time I hope you’ve found this review usefulRichard Director for React Computer Partnership

Custom apps increase customer connection, reward loyalty and blast your business message home.

Gone are the days when businesses had to have a web presence to survive. They now have to be interactive and packed with ways to engage the expectant customer wanting more for their time and their loyalty.

The time has come to embrace mobile trends and incorporate ways the successful big players are using to entice customers to your door. How’s that? With a custom business app. Apps promote your company whilst providing additional pulling power. That power will always be in the novel and the new.

The app revolution…

When the Beatles sang about joining ‘the revolution’ we were all singing a different song. Bricks and mortar were the shop front. Success was measured in the size and number of business locations and customers walked willingly to browse and to buy. Now they are more likely to browse by foot and then track down the smartest price online.

So anything that makes you and your business unique, any additional ‘old fashioned’ style service you can give that marks you out from the rest is the winner. And the winners in the game are those copying the likes of Apple,Metier and the rest.

Here’s what Metier had to say about the importance of integrating apps into your business:

“You should work to provide value to your audience with the mobile experience. That might be best served by a mobile optimised site, an app, or a combination of both”.

Their recommendation is not to be ignored, unless you choose to ignore the mobile trends and stay out of the game!

New to Norwich, Think Mobile Media makes fantastic apps, QR codes and mobile websites that grow your business. Geraldine is a partner at the firm and for full details on how we could help your business please view our site here

If “all the world’s a stage” and your company is considering exhibiting your products and services to the world then your stand or booth is pretty much your stage to impress and convert customers. As a colleague once told me, visitors to an exhibition are yours to lose!

Exhibition visitors are an unusual breed: they’re the sort of people that make the effort to actively seek out new things, new ideas and new people to help them with their work or improving their lifestyle. Passive they are not.

This is why those of us that present our wares at an exhibition need to be on top form with a encyclopedic knowledge of our products and services and moreover, a convincing argument to help those visitors decide between many competing offerings.

Over the course of the next six articles, I hope to relay some of my experience, good and bad when offering goods or services at exhibitions in the hope that some of the good ideas will be adopted by you and some of the pitfalls, blunders and downright cock-ups that I’ve made will serve as salutary lessons to avoid.

I’ve spent many years researching exhibitions, usually from an organisers standpoint and even longer being one of those people manning a stand, trying to sell the idea that we might be just the thing you’re looking for. I’ve spoken to hundreds of exhibitors about their experience at various shows across B2B and consumer shows and hope to compile this learning into something that may just help you. Some reading this will be considering their first potential exhibition, some will have many years of exhibition experience. I’m going to start from the basics, assuming you have never exhibited before. This may be old hat to those experienced readers but I am constantly surprised by experienced exhibitors who tell me that, “We’ve never calculated how much we earn from this exhibition!”

There are many reasons why you might choose to exhibit; to raise brand/company awareness, ensure that they’re recognised among their peers, develop new contacts, highlight a new product or process or even just to sell what’s on the stand, be it burgers or brain scanners. Each of these companies should go through a process to identify the return on investment for their efforts but this is not such an easy calculation as it first seems. On the face of it, the standard calculations of stand cost, marketing collateral costs, personnel, travel, hotels and lost opportunities from being out of the office is a fairly easy spreadsheet to construct. It’s the flip side that starts to look worrying when you realise what has to be achieved to justify the expense.

Remember, this cost is pretty much all off your bottom line (unless you are lucky enough to get supporting grants to develop your business) and it’s not unusual for these costs to add up swiftly to the £20-30k mark for a national exhibition. The largest stand I did research on cost a whopping £11m and that’s before they factored in the personnel cost!

Let’s say that you spend £20k on going to an exhibition and that your net margin for your products or services is 20% (lucky you!). This means that this one exhibition is going to have to return revenue of at least £100k in the next year to justify its part in your marketing mix (assuming you attend the exhibition annually). Some will look at this and say, “that’s great – that’s just one order!” Smaller companies, though who, let’s say, make £1000 profit per day either need to use the show to increase their sales by a factor of ten at the show (for a 2 day show) or ensure that the benefits of the show will spread across the year to allow them increase their sales by at least the equivalent of 20 days pre-show trading. OK, these are extreme examples but either way, if it’s going to bring in that kind of return there are some key things to really do the homework on to give yourself the best chance of success.

Firstly, unless you’re completely swayed by the glitzy (and factual) marketing, research the pips out of the exhibition. You really need to know so many things about the exhibition but the most important is, who comes to it? Thankfully, many of the larger exhibition organisers undertake research of visitors and many B2B exhibitions require you to complete a registration card that enables them, and you, to identify the target visitors and their decision-making and buying power. If they’re not there or you can’t prove that they are definitely going to be there, neither should you be. The three “R’s” that I use are; Relevance, Return and Resources.

Secondly, if it’s an annual event, do go to the exhibition before you decide to exhibit. Ask yourself, “is this the sort of place that my customers or prospects would come to?”, “What’s in it for them?”, “Are they going to be able to find me, see me, notice me, buy from me in all this?”. Talk to the organisers and other exhibitors, whether they are your competition or not and talk to the visitors – the coffee bar chats elicit enormous benefits. Keep your eyes peeled for companies that look out of place as well – they have made the decision that even though their product is not core to the show, the visitors are their potential customers. Well worth talking to them, too. They may well save you lots of trawling through the organiser’s research.

Thirdly, try to assess how big your stand needs to be, what needs to be on it and what personnel need to be attending. Are you likely to be deluged with lots of customers buying your products? How do you create an attractive space that people want to interact with? Do you need somewhere to sit down with a visitor to discuss a detailed offering? Are you performing live demonstrations of your products? Can you replenish stand stock during the exhibition? How can you rise above your competition and be remembered? What are your ultimate aims and objective for attending? How will you measure them?

In the next few articles I will provide thoughts on five key areas relating to exhibitions:

What Pre-Planning you need to do What features your stand should and shouldn’t have What to do at an exhibition to make yourself more visible What people to have on your stand and how to brief them What to do after the exhibition

Exhibiting as part of your marketing/promotional mix can be incredibly rewarding in both the financial sense and to give you real customer closeness as well as keeping an eye on the competition and providing insight as to where the market is going. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some great organisers and exhibitors whose input has helped me compile these articles. I’ve yet to see anyone with the perfect exhibition experience from either side of the fence but between us I hope that we can learn from mistakes and get it better, faster and more cost-effective.

5 Do’s:

DO do the maths DO research exhibitions in your own field and elsewhere DO talk to and understand who visits DO try to picture yourself at the event DO measure your efforts and success

5 Don’t’s:

DON’T dismiss exhibitions because of pre-conceived notions DON’T exhibit unless you can prove a clear ROI DON’T think that you can just turn up DON’T rely on anecdotes DON’T forget: all exhibitors are in the same boat: learn from them.

Howard Frost runs Spurgo, a research company dedicated to help businesses improve their public perception and sales. Over the last twenty years he has worked for clients in the UK, America, Holland, Germany, Italy and France, helping retailers, exhibitors and organisers be the best they can.

New regulations came into effect in England on 30 May 2013 to introduce new permitted development rights that give landowners more rights to carry out works and change the use of their property without needing to apply for planning permission.

The new rights are varied and include the controversial new right to build bigger extensions on existing houses without needing to apply for planning permission. Other changes include:

• Increased rights for agricultural property to be converted to various other uses to boost the rural economy.

• Increased rights for industrial, warehouse and retail buildings to be extended without the need for planning permission.

• Greater rights to convert properties in various commercial uses to Class A uses such as shops and restaurants to encourage the reuse of empty buildings.

Perhaps the most significant change however is the new right to convert offices into houses.

This new right does not apply to the areas of England listed in a new Article 1(6A) inserted into the 1995 General Permitted Development Order. Nor does it apply to listed buildings, scheduled ancient monuments or sites in a safety hazard area or a military explosives storage area. Likewise if the development is of a type or scale so as to require an environmental impact assessment or appropriate assessment then the right does not apply and a full planning application will be required.

Other than these restrictions, the new right allows the conversion of any building to Class C3 residential use so long as it was in use as a Class B1(a) office immediately before today or, if empty immediately before today, the last time it was in use.

While any external alterations to the building will need a planning permission, one clear advantage of the new right is that it avoids any requirement for a planning obligation to be entered into providing for affordable housing or (subject to the caveat below) other infrastructure provision. If the gross internal area of the building is not increasing and the building has not been empty for a long period of time then there will also be no liability for community infrastructure levy.

In order to take advantage of the right the residential use of the building must be commenced before 30 May 2016 and it is necessary to use the new prior approval process to gain the local planning authority’s approval of the transport and highways impacts of the conversion and to confirm that any contamination and flooding risks have been addressed. While this prior approval process may require the provision of planning obligations relating to these specific issues, this is still much narrower than would be the case with a full planning application and the principle of development is, subject to an acceptable resolution of these issues, unable to be disputed.

These new rights, and the ability to convert from offices to housing in particular, will be of significant interest to landowners and developers but they are time limited so act now if you want to take advantage of the relaxations.

The designation of a site as a town or village green (“TVG”) is often the end of the road for a landowner’s aspirations to develop land. Once land has TVG status it is almost impossible to get rid of it and any development other than for public recreational purposes becomes a criminal offence. This is why a TVG application is the nuclear weapon in the armoury of anyone looking to oppose the development of a site.

The all too frequent use of a TVG application to prevent development in recent years has prompted the Government to include new laws in the Growth & Infrastructure Act 2013 (“GIA”) that are designed to address some of the issues faced by landowners and developers.

Under the Commons Act 2006 (“the 2006 Act”), any land can be registered as a TVG if it can be shown that a significant number of the inhabitants of a locality, or a neighbourhood within a locality, have, for a continuous period of not less than twenty years, used the land as of right for the purposes of lawful sports or pastimes.

The Courts have consistently interpreted the tests loosely, making it ever easier to make a successful application. We have also noticed an increase in the number of TVG applications since the passing of the 2006 Act, which made a number of changes intended to make applications easier; including giving an applicant a two year period after the use of the land is interrupted in which to bring an application.

The GIA makes three key changes that seek to tip the balance a little more in favour of development (although they only apply in England):

• The GIA reduces the period of time in which a TVG application can be made after the use of the land is interrupted from two years to one year.

• The GIA enables a landowner to make a formal statement to the commons registration authority for the area in which the land is situated in a form to be set down in regulations. The effect of thisstatement will be to act as an interruption of any period of use thatis on-going.

• The GIA also prevents a TVG application being made once the land is allocated for development (including being identified in a draft Local Plan document) or is the subject of a planning application. Thismoratorium on on an application being made lasts until the land is no longer allocated or is no longer subject to a planning application orplanning permission and no development has taken place.

The first two changes do not come into effect immediately as they require the Government to bring forward regulations. The last change came into effect immediately and so is already offering many development sites immunity from a TVG applicaton being made, although it does not affect any TVG application that was sent to the commons registration authority prior to 25 April this year.

While TVG applications will continue to be an issue for landowners who do not take steps to control public access to their land, these changes give a well organised landowner a much better chance of controlling and managing the risk and also go some way to removing the threat that currently hangs over developers or a TVG application being used as a last-ditch attempt to prevent development from happening.