Member Blog

The Association for Family lawyers, Resolution, found that 46% of cohabiting couples wrongly believe “common-law marriage” laws exist for couples who choose not to marry. As part of their annual Awareness Week, Resolution is focusing on the need for legal reform, to provide at least basic rights for cohabiting couples who separate. Between 25 – 29 November 2019, they will be campaigning on, and raising awareness of, the issues facing our ‘cohabitation nation’.

The fastest growing family type

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the fastest growing family type in 2017 was cohabiting households, with 3.3 million cohabiting families compared to just 1.5 million in 1996. This equates to 1 in every 5 families in the UK.

Many couples starting a family together now choose to delay marriage or avoid it altogether.

Legal disadvantages

There are legal disadvantages, however, for unmarried couples. The law does not currently offer protection for cohabiting couples in the same way as for married couples.

Whilst particularly relevant in unfortunate cases where a relationship breaks down, there are also implications for couples who wish to stay together.

Rights upon the break down of an unmarried relationship

It is possible for a couple to live together for many years and bring up children together, but at the end of the relationship not to have any financial claim for income or assets built up during the relationship.

Other cohabitation issues

As opposed to rights after marriage, a cohabitee is not legally classed as the next of kin. If one partner were to die without making a Will, the surviving partner is not classed as next of kin, so they would not automatically have a right to a share of a property or possessions.

Financially speaking, in certain circumstances, there are some tax advantages to marriage that don’t apply in the same way for unmarried couples. This and further issues are explained in a good article on the Citizens Advice Bureau website, ‘Living together and marriage: Legal differences.’

Providing protection

Via Resolution and other lobby groups, there is a movement to persuade MPs to consider updating the law around cohabitation to catch up with the change in society.

There are also some steps individuals and cohabiting couples can take to protect themselves in advance of anything going wrong, including:

1. A Cohabitation or Living Together Agreement can detail issues including who pays the bills, the operation of bank accounts and how any property should be divided should the relationship end in the future.
2. Before any property is jointly purchased, a Declaration of Trust can set out how sale proceeds will be divided in the future if you split up, for example.
3. Making a Will, to detail your wishes regarding your dependants and property.

Richard Dilks is a specialist Norwich Family Law solicitor at Hatch Brenner on Theatre Street. He is a member of Resolution, and can provide advice to those who are planning on cohabiting or are in a cohabiting relationship. Call 01603 660 811, or email richarddilks@hatchbrenner.co.uk

(Nicola says) After 2 months of the SEO campaign starting we noticed a positive shift in Google traffic. Daniel was on hand all he way offering explanations in a very easy to understand fashion. We have moved up from page 8 to page 1 and sales have started to increase week on week. We are delighted with Daniel and his team and would recommend them for everyone in Norfolk.  

Brief Summary: Established business selling personalised letters from Santa. Targeting parents and grandparents in the UK. Price point of £8.95. The brief to build a brand online and increase awareness and visibility to increase seasonal sales.

Conclusion: One happy family

Freebridge Community Housing employees helped to collect nearly 400 boxes of food donations for the King’s Lynn Foodbank last week.

Six people from across the organisation spent time at the Tesco stores at Hardwick and Gaywood as part of their charitable support leave, a day which all Freebridge employees can take to voluntarily support local charities within the community.

The team were handing out leaflets with shopping lists on to explain to shoppers exactly what the foodbank needs, with the list including items they are in urgent need of such as squash and long life juice in small containers, tinned rice pudding, sponge pudding, UHT and long life milk and tinned meat.

Helen Gilbert from King’s Lynn Foodbank said: “The volunteers from Freebridge made a massive difference – the more leaflets get handed out, the more food we get in, and without their support we’d have been without any help for large parts of the collection, so big thanks to them and to Freebridge for allowing them to come along.”

Birgit Lenton, Director of Corporate Service and Culture at Freebridge said: “Every year Freebridge’s employees choose a charity to support throughout the year, and this year they chose the King’s Lynn Foodbank. We are delighted that our colleagues have been able to help such an important charity at a time of year when they are more needed than ever.”

If you’d like to donate to the King’s Lynn Foodbank you can find details of what to give and where to take it at www.kingslynn.foodbank.org.uk

How to Differentiate Your Business | Start With Why   When you are running a small enterprise, differentiating your business from your competition is essential. Positioning yourself differently within a market can help you stand out from the competition and provide you with the opportunity to really inspire your customers.    Cutting your prices is definitely not how to make your business stand out from the crowd. We all have bills to pay and there will always be someone that’s cheaper than you at some point anyway.    And there’s nothing more depressing than spending an entire month working your socks off only to find your bank balance is still at 0. Trust me, I’ve been there, and it’s a downhill spiral once you’ve made that decision.   So we need answers to the following questions:  1) How to differentiate your brand. 2) How to differentiate your business.    The good news is, it is likely you already possess one of the key ingredients you need to make your business stand out. All we need to do is reveal it and articulate it.    And to do that, all we need is Simon Sinek’s ‘Start With Why’.    Watch the video to find how.   ________   The Native Origin channel provides a small business toolbox – in other words, everything you could possibly need – to gain the essential DIY skills to maximise the success of your small business. The aim of this channel is to give you all of the things I wish I knew when I set up my small business.    So SUBSCRIBE now to be notified the moment new videos go live.

Tudor Lodge Consultants is happy to announce that we are doing SEO for a new tea start-up called Nutra Tea. Based in Hemel Hempstead near London, the company are experts in nutritious but finely crafted herbal teas, which have been formulated in order to provide a number of health benefits without compromising on quality or flavour.

The ingredients have been selected and sourced from over 20 countries in order to provide the finest quality tea. Each tea in the range is made up of 100% raw ingredients with zero additives – compared to regular teas which may only include a small percentage of ginger or mint, but are loaded with our flavours and sweeteners to improve flavour.

Job specification

Our role as SEO professionals is to help maximise visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing and ultimately lead to sales.

We created a long list of keywords to target such as ginger tea, herbal tea, mint tea etc, but appreciate the high competition from other retailers and top supermarket brands.

Therefore, we compiled a long list of long tail keywords to be more specific and target the uses of the products including ‘tea of anxiety,’ ‘tea for stress’ and ‘tea to boost energy’ which we have curated through a number of effective guides and landing pages.

Our SEO approach for Nutra Tea

Links: our team understands the importance of having strong links in order to improve a firm’s Google ranking. Consequently, we have focused on ensuring that Nutra Tea has reputable links with a number of trustworthy websites. Not only does this make it easier for Google to crawl the site, but it also improves the startup’s SEO ranking as well.

Content writing: We have also been writing content for Nutra Tea to help solidify its reputation in the health sector as well as to a larger audience base overall. We have shared this content to be featured on a variety of websites in the field to help improve the company’s rankings.

Technical SEO: In addition we have ensured that content has been carefully structured, so that it adheres to  our SEO guidelines. This includes things such as making sure to use relevant topic titles, H2 headings as well as internal links on any article we write for Nutra Tea.

In month one, you can only really expect to rank for your brand name and maybe the odd long-term keyword. However, as the weeks progress and we reach the 3, 6 and 12 month stage, we expect the brand to start pushing to page 1 for some larger terms and generating quality sales.

During the first few years of business, small companies have to face a lot of challenges. Some of them are harder to overcome, while many can be resolved effectively. In fact, many common business problems are fixable such as generating leads, finding customers, building an email list, hiring talented staff, balancing growth and quality. To resolve all these issues, you just require to take the right steps. Below in this article, we’ve mentioned a few main problems most small companies face. Read them all, take your time, understand these issues, and introduce solutions accordingly.

Finding Customers

Every business needs to make an effort in order to grab the attention of their customers. Marketers of world-renowned companies such as Apple, Toyota, and McDonald’s don’t just sit around and wait for their customers to come they work every day to find and attract new customers. However, for small businesses, especially the one that just started, finding customers can be a very challenging task. To find customers, first, you need to understand who your ideal customers are. Once you’ve done that, you have to build your buyer persona and then start creating content to reach your customers effectively.

Cash Flow

Being a business owner, you need to understand that poor cash flow can potentially break your business. According to the report, every one out of four firms could not even complete their first year, and over half don’t survive past the fifth. While investing money in your business is necessary, you must generate profit as well. You need to keep a hard eye on cash flowing in and out of your business. Plus, you need to make sure that you collect all the payments on time so that you are not just investing money. For this, you need to make sure that you receive payments from those who have bought your products on lease. If they don’t pay you money on time, then you can contact any debt collector to ask for advice. Click here to learn more about debt collection through legal processes.

Lack of Communication

While business communication has improved in different ways, many issues are still unsolved. These problems can have a significant influence on your business performance and key stakeholders, including workers, customers, and third-party vendors. Some of the most common communication barriers that your small business can face are missing important calls, lack of communication with stakeholders, and disconnected employees. In order to make sure proper interaction between employees and stakeholders, you need to introduce practices that can eliminate these communication barriers.

Spreading Brand Awareness

Have you ever wondered how today’s most prominent brands become a household name? How do they do it? How did they grow that rapidly? Can your business make progress like that? Why not! It is essential to understand that nobody gains success overnight. Behind every successful business, there are failures, hard work, and rejections. To build and promote your company, you need to spread your business message. You can do that through PR, co-marketing, and blogging. These strategies have proven to be beneficial for businesses of all scales.

Liftshare CEO calls transport sector’s efforts to reduce emissions ’embarrassing’ live on BBC Breakfast television

Liftshare Founder and CEO, Ali Clabburn, was interviewed on BBC Breakfast in the run up to the forthcoming General Election.

Speaking at the John Innes Centre in Norwich for the BBC’s flagship morning news programme’s coverage of how national issues are effecting business, Ali was invited onto BBC Breakfast to give his opinion on what government should be taking about when it comes to transport.

“Sadly transport is now THE most emitting sector. It produces more emissions than any other sector. The energy sector has reduced emissions by 60% in the last 20-30 years and the transport sector has done nothing and it’s embarrassing really.

There are plenty of things we could do right now to overcome this problem and sharing a is a key solution.”

Asked for his views on what he wanted politicians to be talking about, Ali said, “I want to see them stop pushing things off into the long grass, particularly when the environment is concerned. We’ve got solutions now that could help within the next 2-5 years. They should be investing in Future Mobility Zones across cities in the UK to start getting public and private sectors working together to solve these problems.

Things like more car sharing, more cycling, more walking, more car clubs in cities can help solve the problem really quickly, and if we can get it done now we can really start reducing the emissions and improve the air quality in our cities.

We’re killing 40,000 people due to air quality issues and we can solve it now.”  

How can company values help people be their best selves at work? An organisation’s company values can play a significant role in creating a workplace culture which enables employees to bring their best selves to work and therefore be more engaged, motivated and productive. Using her own experience as a co-founder of Pure, a values-led organisation, Chief Operating Officer Gill Buchanan has shared some of her top tips on embedding values into a business and the reasons why this makes a positive difference. Gill said: “In our day-to-day work as professional recruitment specialists for the eastern region, we are increasingly seeing just how much importance candidates place on finding an organisation which genuinely cares and which has a set of values they can really relate to. Companies with clearly communicated values are often the most successful when it comes to competing for top talent and having high levels of employee engagement. Supporting vision and purpose A company’s vision and purpose can be used as the inspiration and guidance to set company values. This will help to ensure that they are authentic and can successfully form the basis for the organisation’s culture. For example, when we established Pure, our vision was to create a company which was different to others within the recruitment industry. We wanted our business to focus on developing long-term client and candidate relationships rather than being driven by numbers and KPIs. Having a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve helped us to choose our values. We wanted them to represent everything we believed was important about the way we wanted to work and achieve success. Our six values are: Pure Quality, Pure Teamwork, Pure Supports, Pure Delivers, Pure Rewards and Pure Innovates. Bringing people together Employees who feel a sense of belonging are far more likely to be engaged and motivated to go the extra mile for themselves, their colleagues and the business as a whole. Shared values can bring people together whatever their background, interest, age or level of expertise. They enable businesses to celebrate and encourage diversity while still uniting people in day to day behaviours, standards and attitudes. We recognise that our business is a people business. We want to bring our people together and look after them as they are our ambassadors and the ones engaging with our candidates and clients. Our values have helped us to create a culture where great work is rewarded, teamwork is celebrated and everyone is supported to deliver high quality. Company culture foundations People spend a lot of time at work, so it is understandable that they will want to be in an environment which is a positive place to be. An organisation’s values can help to achieve this as they set the foundations for a company’s culture and the attitudes and behaviours to develop and maintain it. For example, we have a people-first culture and our Pure Supports company value helps us to achieve this. As well as supporting each other, and our candidates and clients, we want our employees to have the support they need to do their job well. It helps us to shape everything from the equipment and training we provide to the initiatives we put in place to support the mental and physical wellbeing of our team. Embedding values into day to day business For company values to make a real difference they need to be brought to life and embedded in day-to-day working practices. This means more than just displaying them as part of the office branding, although that is still a very positive thing to do! They also need to become foundational to the business and genuinely underpin everything. Values can be embedded by making them a part of every aspect of your business from recruitment and onboarding through to referencing them in staff reviews, reward and recognition schemes and L&D plans. They also need to be reinforced and authentically displayed by the leadership team to ensure they flow from the top down. As part of the leadership team at Pure, our values have given us the basis of establishing a consistency of how we want to do things. Because we all really believe in the values, we can live them while still being our true selves, we don’t have to robotically try and demonstrate them. They have also become a key part of the language we use when talking about our business, from updating our teams internally through to our external communications. We believe that being able to share our values with our clients and candidates helps to give them a real understanding of what it is like to work with us. The same goes for potential new recruits. Our values help us to explain more about how we have created a culture which differentiates us from other recruitment firms. To help share this with prospective employees, and new recruits, we have put together a Pure book to explain more about our company in a fun, easy and tangible way. After a few months of being part of our team, we also ask new employees to deliver a presentation which includes sharing examples of when they have seen our values being demonstrated day to day. This really helps people to understand why they are so important to us and how they benefit everybody.”

Norfolk’s tourism economy brings in approximately £3.3 billion annually and provides over 67,000 jobs (that’s 18.7% of all employment in Norfolk). That’s a healthy economy and a lot of revenue your small business can draw from. That’s why every small business in Norfolk should have a marketing strategy that targets tourists. Marketing is an important skill to master if you want your small business to grow. So much so, that marketing skills rank among the top 10 in-demand skills on LinkedIn. Segmented marketing targets specific groups or demographics, like tourists. Marketing to tourists doesn’t have to involve big budgets or elaborate campaigns. Here are five easy ways to market your small business to tourists.

Get listed on online business directories

Joining the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce is a great way to network with other businesses. There are also several online business directories you can join to target both local residents and visitors to Norfolk. Some directories charge a listing fee but others are free to join. Here are a few to start with:

The Business UK directory offers its members free advertising. Local Business Forums lists businesses across three districts in Norfolk, covering the towns of Attleborough, Snetterton, Breckland, Broadland, South Norfolk, and Thetford. On Yell.com, you can place sponsored ads and purchase digital marketing packages that run pay-per-click advertising campaigns. They also have a smartphone app that allows customers to easily find your business, get directions, and leave a review. Buy Local Norfolk is passionate about local sustainability. If your business uses products and materials sourced locally in the making of your goods, this is a great directory to join.

Place marketing material at tourist hot spots

One of the easiest ways to reach tourists is with old-fashioned print marketing. Think of how many times you’ve browsed the leaflet rack while waiting to check-in at a hotel. Plenty of other tourists do the same thing. Print a batch of leaflets, brochures, or business cards and distribute these at airports, hotels, car rental offices and any other tourist touchpoints you can think of. If your design skills are lacking, Norwich Print Solutions can help design your promotional material.

Advertise online

Technology and travel have converged. Today, tourists do most of their travel research and planning online. According to Google Travel, 74% of travellers plan their trips online compared to only 13% who still use travel agencies. That’s why online marketing is a must to draw tourists.

Paid advertising on platforms like GoogleAds and Facebook ads allows you to fine-tune your target market. You can create campaigns that target a specific demographic, location, and even time of day. It also lets you choose the best keywords to attract the right customers. If budget is a concern, pay-per-click advertising allows you to control your ad spend by setting an affordable campaign budget.

Approach bloggers to highlight your business

Influencer marketing has exploded over the last few years and for good reason. Having your product or service mentioned on a high-profile blog can boost your business’s reputation. Successful bloggers have built up a loyal following who trust their opinion. If they mention your business, their readers are likely to trust you too. It also helps you acquire valuable backlinks to your website. All of this increases the chance of tourists finding your business when searching for travel information.

When working with bloggers, it’s important to find the right fit. Put together a list of suitable travel bloggers and local bloggers who focus on the Norfolk region. Before approaching the blogger, do some research on their criteria for sponsored posts. If they are open to a sponsored post, offer to send them a product sample or invite them to experience a service you provide. Most bloggers will only recommend a product or service they have used and like.

Book your spot at local events

If you sell crafts or food, having a presence at local events, markets, and fairs is a great way to take your business to the customer. If there are events taking place during school vacations or over the Christmas season, like the Norfolk Creations Christmas Fair and Holkham Festive Food Fair, book your spot as a vendor. At these times of the year, there are more visitors to our shores and many of them attend these festivals.

Marketing your small business to tourists can be accomplished on a small budget yet boost your annual turnover in a big way.

The regeneration project at Freebridge’s Hillington Square estate in King’s Lynn has won another award in the Design & Craftsmanship Awards last night inNorwich, winning jointly alongside East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices’ The Nook.

The award which was given in the new Civic and Community category waspresented to Freebridge Community Housing, Fielden + Mawson LLP – the architects currently working on the project, Mae – the architects involved in the original phases, Hemingway Design – design consultants on the project, Lovell Partnership – the construction firm who completed work on the first four stages, and Rossi Long Consulting Ltd and ALH, respectively the structural and mechanical & electrical engineers.

The Civic and Community category is supported by national charity Civic Voice, with the award seeking to recognise examples of high quality design and projects that make a positive contribution to the local area. As a winner of the award the regeneration project is now put forward to the Civic Voice National Design Awards in 2020.

Judges for the award were looking at “not just a well-designed successful end product, but also the community story and collaborative process which lies behind it”.

Tony Hall, Freebridge’s Chief Executive, said “We are delighted that the Hillington Square project has won another award, and are particularly pleased that it has won in a category that looked at the wider work of what we’ve achieved so far. In the next few weeks we’ll be confirming our plans in respect of the what we still need to do to complete the project and I look forward to seeing the work on the site start again next year.”

The entire team at Tudor Lodge Consultants are thrilled to announce that we are working with the well-renowned and very well-established team at Robert Quinn Consultants on their new website and offering, SMCR Compliance (https://www.smcrcompliance.com/).

With so much going on in the world of finance and all the compliance that goes hand in hand with the UK’s huge financial services sector, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have in recent years rolled out a range of different regulation for different sub-sectors of the financial market to keep things fair and safe for users of these services throughout the UK.

One such type of new financial regulation is the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR), which has replaced the Approved Persons Regime for all FCA registered companies and firms in the UK. in short, this regulation makes more members of management and staff in qualifying businesses responsible for the regulatory compliance necessary.

As part of this process, Robert Quinn’s regulatory team have created their SMCR Compliance brand which features a plethora of e-learning and tools for managers and qualifying people to utilise and undertake to make sure that their businesses are fully compliant with UK regulations. Working with their team, we are using our search engine optimisation (SEO) team to overcome the following challenges in the industry and help them with:

• Awareness of the Regulation – Many businesses who easily qualify for SMCR and all it entails are not fully aware (if at all) that they qualify for this regime. Hence, when the regulation comes in and takes effect, they may be in a vulnerable position. By helping the SMCR Compliance brand climb higher up Google, we are helping get them in front of the audiences that matter
• Promoting E-Learning – Part of the SMCR programme required to be undertaken by firms and financial companies, is the relevant people within the businesses in question learning the relevant regulation. Hence, we are helping SMCR Compliance to increase their online visibility for their e-learning offering through the organic rankings of Google
• User Experience – The user experience for those that reach the site is a crucial aspect of any online marketing. When it comes to SEO, it is that extra bit important. SEO allows the capturing of relevant users to the website in question. However, if the website isn’t appealing and if it doesn’t perform to a high level and at the optimum speed, users will leave. Hence, we are working on the site speed of the SMCR Compliance website
• Crawling and Understanding – Helping Google to fully understand and comprehend everything on the SMCR website is key. Ultimately, if Google doesn’t understand and fully register the content and offerings on the website, nothing will rank currently if at all. Hence, we are working on the fundamental ranking factors to ensure Google can understand, read and register everything on the SMCR Compliance website properly

We are always gifting each other for different things. Sometimes, it is a just-because gift. Like just because you mean the world to me, here is a necklace, mum. Or it could be an occasion such as a graduation. You need to get something that shows how much you honour a loved one for such a great accomplishment. And sometimes it is the holidays, and you need to think about fantastic Christmas presents for her. With all these instances, it would help if you had a guide that you could follow time and again. The good news is that you can use a few simple steps to get everyone a gift they will treasure. Here’s how:

How much can you spend?

Sometimes, it is not how much you would like to spend, but rather how much you can afford. Let’s suppose you are working with a budget of fifty dollars. It would help if you used this as a parameter for the gifts. That way, you would walk into a shop and state that you need a gift that is around that price range or below that. For online shopping, you can put this as one of the determinants. Having a budget helps in narrowing down the choices. It also keeps you from spending too much money on a gift, only to realize that you dented your savings by a significant percentage.

What is the occasion?

Now that you know how much you can spend on the gift, you need to narrow down the options further. And you can do this by considering the type of occasion you will be attending. Here is an example of this. For a bridal shower, you could get an item from an adult shop, if you get the drift. This gift would be one that would not lead to cringes and side looks when opened in front of people. But take the same gift to a graduation party where family members are present, and it will be out of place. The host may not mind the gift and may inwardly be itching to take it home immediately, but the attendants may feel put out. So you can save this for another time. But that does not mean that your gift should be dull. You know what the host would like, and you can get a gift in line with their personality. As long as it is mindful of other people in the party.

Also, other than appropriateness, you should think about the use of the gift. Take the example of a wedding or a house-warming party. It is the start of a new life and calls for gifts that aid in the same. While you could show up with a bottle of chardonnay, it would be great if you presented them with something practical. However, if the hosts insist on simple items, you do not have to go out of your way. You will find that in some cases, the hosts may state that they have a register in place with their preferred selections. You can have an easy time shopping for them by going through the list and choosing what would work with your budget.

Do they have a colour preference?

While some people may not openly admit it, we are all drawn to some colours more than others. Other people may state that they have a favourite colour. You can use this information when getting a gift. Suppose you have a friend who loves pink, and you are getting a bathrobe for them. Getting one in pink would delight them. Then some people do not like colours much. Or you could be unsure of what they would like. In this case, it is best to go with neutral colours as they will rarely be out of place.

What do they like?

We all have different interests. Some people are all about photography, while others have a keen interest in collections. Maybe you have a friend who loves trying out new cuisines and even has a channel on the same. Getting them a cooking set, recipe book, or something related to this would be great. It might feel challenging to get something in a field in which you are a newbie. But the results will be well worth it.

Online shopping has opened up a new realm of possibilities. And you can get a lot of creative gifts for your loved ones at the touch of a button. So don’t shy away from being creative in this process. Have fun!