Member Blog

Grants of between £5,000 and £500,000 are available from our Growing Business Fund. As the new financial year kicks in, we thought it would be a great opportunity to give you some top tips on securing a grant, which is funding you don’t pay back.

New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership helps to drive business growth and enterprise in Norfolk and Suffolk and we’ve secured funding from Government for companies in the two counties which want to grow their business and employ more people.

We’ve given grants to more than 180 companies since April 2013. But, what is the criteria and which other businesses have been successful?

Here are our top tips.

• You need to be looking to invest, expand and recruit new staff
• You must be an established and growing SME in Norfolk or Suffolk and your project must be based in one or other of the counties
• What’s the project? You need to be considering something really tangible to help your growth plans. You may need new equipment, or machinery or to buy larger premises.
• The Growing Business Fund can provide up to 20% of the cost of the total funding you need. However, you must be able to secure at least 80% from private funds such as a bank, your business, other investors etc.
• You need to demonstrate why you’ve been unable to secure all the funding you require from other financial sources, be it a loan or another grant scheme.
• It’s really important that you meet the criteria and supply all the information we need in your application. The full criteria is here.

Companies which have secured grants range from manufacturers to digital companies and specialist food companies to sign-makers. Here are some case studies of justsome of the local companies who’ve received grants from our Growing Business Fund, to help them grow. Click here

Find out more:

Visit our Growing Business Fund web page here

Phone our New Anglia Growth Hub on 0300 333 6536 and meet up with one of our Growth Hub Advisers to get some free face-to-face advice or mail growthhub@newanglia.co.uk

Watch a short video of three businesses which have benefited from grants here

If you’re looking for new premises, it’s worth widening your range of options. By choosing to renovate a derelict building in a disadvantaged area, you could benefit from a significant tax break.

Not many people are aware of the Business Premises Renovation Allowance (BPRA), but it’s certainly worth finding out more if you’re in the market for a new office, factory or business site.

When you buy a derelict building, you’d obviously need to undertake renovations to ensure it’s in a usable state. When you do, it’s not deemed to be a ‘repair’ for tax purposes, but is seen instead as a capital cost. Tax relief against profits are minimal (possibly related to integral features, such as electrics and plumbing).

With BPRA, you can claim upfront tax relief for the costs of renovation if (a) the property is in a disadvantaged area; (b) the building has been unused for at least a year; and (c) the premises were previously used for commercial purposes rather than as residences.

It’s worth making a couple of points of clarification on these criteria. First, it’s possible to discover whether your proposed property is in an area considered to be disadvantaged by using a postcode checker on the Department for Business Innovation & Skills website. Second, the requirement for a property to be unused for a year doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be unused at the time of purchase. Provided a year elapses before any work starts, you can still qualify for BPRA.

As you might expect, the preferential tax arrangements are designed to stimulate business and help to regenerate areas that have previously been struggling. Under EU state aid legislation, costs of renovation are restricted to €20 million, although obviously many businesses will be making investments well within this figure.

It’s important to note that there’s no allowance for the cost of the land or for extending the premises, although you do get a 100% write-off for tax purposes on the other renovations. What’s more, it won’t be clawed back as long as you don’t sell the building within five years from the date it became available for use.

This relief is only available until 2017, so it’s important to think now about how you might take advantage of it in the next couple of years. It’s a specialist area, so ensure that you take the necessary advice from your accountant.

Fleet services can be invaluable for companies [Small fleets rely on swift maintenance solutions and clever fleet management to flourish] of any size, but for businesses that only require a small fleet, the benefits are practically endless. Whatever the industry, from construction to catering, van hire can offer huge financial and practical advantages to small businesses.

Cost Cutting

Venson Automotive Solutions recently conducted a survey of its customers, and a huge 89% majority agreed that containing costs was their biggest worry for the coming year. Many small businesses are feeling ongoing pressure to keep a constant close eye on their cashflow, and in light of ever-rising fuel prices, vehicle costs are an unsavoury subject. Without millions to spend on transport and logistics, small businesses could avoid the many costs associated with transport and logistics through van hire.

Van hire when you want it, where you want it

Short term van leasing could allow your small company to hold off on long-term commitment, letting you test out a fleet expansion while gradually adjusting to changes in the workplace, such as seasonal staff hire, or team expansions. If your company doesn’t need the extra vehicles somewhere down the line, you’re not under any obligation to keep them, allowing real flexibility and making great financial sense.

Avoid Breakdown Disasters

Venson cites that only around 20% of organisations consider a vehicle’s whole life cost when calculating the expense of running a fleet, ignoring the multiple factors that can potentially add huge costs on to your transport throughout the year. Downtime and maintenance costs are serious matters for any size of business, but can potentially cripple a small fleet, as it is far harder to make up for the fall in productivity, and financial repercussions may be more severe in the context of small business budgets.

Ford Retail conducted research with 250 small business owners in late 2013, and revealed that fleet vehicles each spend an average of four days off the road per year, typically costing a business at least £200 per day in loss of manpower and productivity.

Leasing your fleet can take away this stress, as dedicated and knowledgeable fleet management teams will provide constant customer care for breakdown and recovery. The reality with private ownership is that all responsibility falls to you to arrange for maintenance and repair, which is performed by a garage on commission. In contrast, when maintenance and breakdown recovery is provided by your fleet leasing company, you are the number one priority, and no one will be taking you for a ride.

Hired Help

Last year, Rob Gray of HR Magazine stated that dedicated in-house fleet managers are becoming more and more of a rarity, as companies increasingly outsource the function, in order to benefit from the insight of an industry expert and navigate tightening budgets. Specialist fleet managers are, naturally, experts in the fleet services world, and can quickly and easily deal with any difficulties you might have with speed, experience and professionalism.

For small businesses with limited resources and manpower, organisation is everything, and having a talented fleet manager on hand can make the difference between chaos and perfect co-ordination.

The ‘sunrise period’ opened recently for the new .sucks extension, giving brand owners an advance opportunity to register their trademarks as domain names – for commercial or defensive reasons. Once the sunrise period comes to an end, on 29 May 2015, registration will be open to all. How should trademark holders approach this potentially damaging extension?

As the number of top-level domains (TLDs) continues to expand, trademark holders are having to assess each TLD launch for both opportunity and risk. Opportunity to market to customers in new and more innovative ways, versus the risk of opening up their brand to infringement activity, loss of revenue or reputation damage if they decide not to pursue registrations for the new extension.

For many well-known brands, that risk will be particularly acute following the launch of the .sucks domain name extension on 30 March.

Between a rock and a hard place Whereas some new extensions (such as .luxury, .bank, .clothing or .bike) may enhance the reputation of a brand or its trademarks, by showing immediately to which category the service or product belongs, the .sucks extension has more detrimental implications. It has been set up to give the public the opportunity to criticise a company or brand, albeit with certain limitations.

The question facing companies, therefore, is whether they should defensively register .sucks domain names for their trademarks to stop others from setting up sites to target their brands.

The sunrise period offers them the opportunity for advance registration; however, to be eligible, marks need to be recorded at the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Sunrise registration for .sucks is also more costly than for general registration. A domain name under this new extension costs 2,950 euro (per year) during sunrise, with the fee expected to drop considerably once the sunrise period ends.

Pursuing such a defensive strategy is costly in other ways too. If you decide to block .sucks activity, then what about other potentially damaging URLs? Where should you draw the line?

Monitoring for misuse A lot of it will depend on how high profile your business is – and how likely it is to be targeted and/or harmed by a .sucks registration. Many brand owners may choose instead to simply monitor the .sucks launch to see how it develops in the market. Not every new TLD will be successful – some will be picked up by consumers, while others won’t. Some companies may even view .sucks as a legitimate forum for customer feedback.

Nonetheless, monitoring will be key. Novagraaf’s NovaTrack web-monitoring tool provides a simple and cost-effective means of keeping on top of sensitive third-party registrations, such as .sucks. The tool will also capture evidence of infringement or malicious activity should a brand owner seek to take legal steps to close down or retrieve a domain name; for example, via WIPO’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) procedure.

Click here for tips and advice on developing an effective domain name registration strategy.Click here to sign up for alerts on new domain name extensions that are opening for registration.

Most of us approach the Easter break with resolutions to spring clean our homes, sort out our gardens or otherwise declutter our lives, and our working lives are not much different. Busy desks and inboxes, meetings and to-do lists; it’s no wonder that we often leave the ‘big’ projects for quieter times.

If you’re looking for a good project to get your teeth into after the bank holidays, then you could do worse than choosing your IP portfolio. Frequently bloated with unused registrations or starved with gaps in coverage, spring cleaning your IP via a detailed audit could help you to identify ways to streamline your portfolio, saving you money while also improving the efficiency of your assets.

Where to begin Many companies estimate the healthiness and relative worth of their IP portfolios based on size alone. However, those IP rights will be worth far less if the following checks and balances aren’t also considered. We find that many companies can reduce their spending on IP matters and ringfence the strength of their rights by auditing their IP portfolios, using the following three-step process.

Step 1: Review your IP records and data for accuracy The data in your IP portfolio needs to be accurate and up-to-date, otherwise you may find that you don’t quite own the rights that you think you do. Taking the time now to cleanse, update and rationalise your IP data can save you both time and money in the long-run, as it will identify errors in the records, as well as unnecessary costs such as duplicate registrations (e.g between national and CTM rights).

Centralising IP ownership can also help you to avoid unnecessary costs and risks, e.g. due to refusals or duplicate records. This also enables companies to file oppositions or to act against infringement on behalf of one formal party, instead of being forced to initiate double procedures in case of decentralised ownership.

Step 2: Audit your IP portfolio for value A regular IP audit enables you to assess the value of your portfolio against the costs involved in growing and maintaining the IP rights it contains. It helps to identify, for example, trademark rights that are being renewed despite never being used, as well as gaps in protection, which might leave a company exposed. To undertake this audit, we would first recommend:

• Reviewing your IP strategy to ensure that it takes into account your strategic business goals;
• Prioritising your IP rights (e.g. between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’), and markets (countries and goods/services) based on current branding/R&D strategy and future plans;
• Auditing licensing and royalty agreements to ensure that the rights have been correctly maintained and the revenues received; and
• Reviewing your supplier list to see if it is possible to generate further cost savings by consolidating your IP portfolio with one provider.

Step 3: Conduct regular healthchecks Completing an IP audit is only the first step in what should be a regular programme of portfolio reviews. By conducting audits at regular intervals (ideally at least every six months), you can ensure that your portfolio continues to evolve as your business does, and it could also identify additional savings in the future; for example, by:

• Merging registrations;
• Allowing possible duplicate (local) registrations to lapse; and
• Identifying unexploited rights that could be sold, licensed or allowed to lapse.

Around one in five managers who have responsibility over fleet operations claim that administration tasks have become more time-intensive over the past year. Luckily, overworked fleet managers could benefit from van leasing deals that support their efforts.

More administration and multi-tasking

GE CapitalFleet Services recently released their quarterly Company Car Trendsresearch, which found that 20% of fleet managers (whose primary job role was fleet related) had experienced an increase in administrative duties.

A similar increase was reported by 17% of managers with a wider remit beyond fleet management. When questioned about their primary job role, 25% stated that they were operations based, while another 22% were in finance, 18% in administration and 16% in human resources.

While this research focused primarily on company cars, it’s likely that this situation is very similar, if not worse, in the case of commercial vehicle fleets.

Getting tied up in fleet management issues

Gary Killeen, managing director at GE Capital UK Fleet Services, explained: “We believe that these figures show two key findings.

“Firstly, and most obviously, a sizeable number of managers involved in running fleets are seeing a year-on-year increase in the amount of administrative work they have to undertake.

“It is the second finding that we find more interesting. It clearly shows that managers who become involved in fleet decisions, and for whom company cars and vans are not their primary responsibility, increasingly get tied up in fleet issues.

“This is especially true in areas such as operations, finance and human resources. For these core functions, fleet administration is eating up a greater amount of work time and it appears that this is a situation that is increasing quite quickly.”

Fleet compliance gets more complicated

There are several reasons that explain the growing amount of administration in fleet management.

We recently examined the importance of fleet compliance in detail, and found significant financial, legal and moral implications for fleet managers who fail to keep on top of vehicle and driver standards. An employee has a Duty of Care to at-work drivers, and fleet managers may be under pressure to enforce fleet compliance measures.

Environmental responsibilities are also making it more complicated to run a vehicle fleet, particularly for businesses which use large commercial vehicles. In urban centres such as London, strict new legislations have been introduced to curb air pollution levels and fine non-compliant fleets.

Van leasing companies can help your fleet

Multi-tasking managers can struggle with fleet management responsibilities, and it isn’t a huge surprise. There’s a lot to consider when running a commercial vehicle fleet, and if your background is in finance or HR it’s unlikely that you will be aware of all the current legislation and best practices.

By outsourcing some aspects of fleet management to a professional van leasing company, a business can take some pressure off managers who are working across various different departments. We provide all our contract hire customers with all-inclusive vehicle maintenance and servicing, so you don’t need to worry about passing MOTs or arranging roadside assistance.

Accident [Slowing down for better fleet accident management] management is a big part of any fleet manager’s job, and speeding has recently been revealed as a major problem for many British businesses. Research has found that company car drivers are more reckless than private motorists on UK roads, so how can driver education help to slow the problem down?

Adding up the numbers

According to the RAC’s Report on Motoring 2014, a startling 88% of company car drivers in the UK admitted to regularly exceeding the legal speed limit on motorways. A significantly lower 67% of private motorists confessed to breaking the law, although this figure is still worryingly high.

In research by the RAC, 62% of company car drivers stated that they reached speeds of 80mph on motorways, and 8% admitted to exceeding 90mph.

Drivers justified their speeding offences in various ways. While 31% argued that they were following the general flow of traffic and 19% claimed driving conditions were favourable, 15% said 70mph “felt too slow” and 8% argued that modern cars are built to go faster than the speed limit dictates.

Tackling speed offences in accident management

This research draws attention to a common concern that many company car drivers consider speeding on a motorway more socially acceptable than speeding on any other road. In fact, 65% of company car drivers argued that it is acceptable to break the 70mph limit and travel at up to 80mph.

Interestingly, 90% of company car drivers agreed that they would be in favour of an increase in the speed limit on motorways, in contrast with a significantly lower 69% of other motorists.

Company car drivers are the worst offenders for motorway speeding in the UK, so it’s important that speed compliance is closely monitored and addressed. Fleet accident management relies on safe driving practices being taught, encouraged and even enforced across the entire workforce, so that every at-work driver is aware of their responsibilities on the road. Remember, your company is legally responsible for any employee driving for work, so if they’re not safe neither are you!

Speeding is bad for business

David Aldridge, business services director at RAC, explained: “Whilst drivers may feel tempted to save time in the working day by going faster, any fleet manager knows that collecting speeding points is ultimately bad for business.

“Telematics is useful for fleet managers who want to monitor driver behaviour more closely and check company car drivers’ compliance with national speed limits. This can not only improve driver behaviour but help managers operate a more efficient, cost effective and sustainable fleet.”

We can provide the award-winning Quartix Telematics system in any of our contract hire vehicles. This technology uses GPS, GPRS and the internet to allow users access to live and historical fleet information from any computer. Regular logs can even be emailed to you directly, delivering the right data at the right time to suit you.

We can also help your business fleet on the road by providing accident management services, such as full breakdown cover, comprehensive servicing and even replacement vehicles.

It [Fleet management – to outsource or not to outsource?] can be tricky to successfully outsource something as important as your vehicle fleet, especially if it impacts upon your core business activities. However, we want to share three simple reasons why outsourcing fleet management services to an industry expert can make your life easier.

The three E’s of fleet management

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re operating in – every company that runs vehicles should be focused on improving the efficiency, economy and evaluation of its fleet.

Economy

Commercial vans and trucks are very expensive to acquire and maintain, and it’s essential that your vehicle fleet doesn’t become a financial black hole.

There is no reason to outsource fleet management if it will be more expensive than managing it in-house. However, it’s likely that a professional company could save you money in the long term.

Van leasing companies can offer competitive prices for vehicles and services, as industry connections and economies of scale often allow them to achieve lower costs than your business would incur. Some leasing contracts include MOTs, maintenance work and even breakdown cover in the price, which reduces the risk of any unexpected costs popping up.

Investigate whether a professional fleet management provider could help to bring overheads down before you make your decision.

Efficiency

We know that fleet managers often juggle several job roles at once. This can make it difficult to stay on top of all the little details that can influence the productivity of the entire business.

Rather than asking the impossible from overworked employees, why not lend them a helping hand? The more tasks you can automate in your vehicle fleet, the easier it will be to increase efficiency.

Fleet management solutions can help you to keep on top of complex operations. By having an industry expert to hand around the clock, your staff can focus their full attention on core business activities.

Evaluation

It is extremely important to evaluate the performance of your entire fleet to ensure that it is providing value to the business. However, keeping track of all this data and making sense of it can be a mammoth task.

The ideal solution is online fleet management software which enables employees to log all vehicle data remotely. The software can then track patterns and report on fleet activities independently, and dashboard visuals can make this data simple to read.

Picking between fleet management companies

If you’re trying to pick the best fleet management provider for your company, consider their industry expertise. Which firm can relate best to your pains, and what benefits can they offer your company?

We have spent decades working with customers from a wide range of industries, so we understand how to cater to specialist needs. With our help, your business can flourish. Contact us today to find out more.

Domain names play an important role in the sales and marketing activity of any organisation, but it’s all too easy to overlook the IP implications of registering and managing online channels. Where then should you begin when developing a domain name management strategy?We set out points to consider when seeking to align domain name registrations with trademark rights.

1. What? To begin, consider what you should register – and start to construct a hierarchy of registrations or potential registrations. Typically, your company name should be on top; followed by your core (and preferably trademark-protected) brand and product/service names; and then your secondary or lesser known brands. As part of this, you should also consider defensive registrations; for example, common misspellings of your company or brand names, or terms/brands/slogans with which you are commonly associated. Finally, one-off registrations (e.g. associated with a new product launch or marketing campaign) will need to be recorded and maintained.

2. Where? Or rather, in the case of domain names, with which registries? These days, it’s quite hard to find available domain names with the popular and wide-reaching .com, which is why the top-level domain was extended in the first place to include a myriad of other possible dotBrand extensions. This gives you as a brand owner a lot more choice, but it also makes it harder to identify which extensions will resonate best with your customer base – and can leave you open to infringement activity. For example, should you choose a geographical-based domain (e.g. .London or .co.uk), or will this limit your market? Should you opt for one of the new sector-focused extensions (e.g. .shop or .green), or wait to see if they catch on first? And, what about those extensions that you choose not to register – how can you be sure that a third party won’t seek to make a profit from that decision or oversight? Ongoing monitoring will be key to ensuring that you stay on top of any malicious activity as new domains begin to hit the market.

3. When? Trademark holders benefit from early registration rights on the launch of a new domain name extension. In the so-called Sunrise period (which lasts at least 30 days), only trademark owners can register domain names that match their brands before the extension in question becomes available to the general public. The only restriction is that the trademark(s) must be registered at the Trademark Clearinghouse, something Novagraaf can arrange for you. For pre-existing extensions, it will be important to check for availability as early as possible in the product launch cycle; particularly, if you wish to keep the domains registered as consistent as possible.

4. How? Domain names are not expensive rights to obtain or maintain; however, the time and cost of pursuing third parties for infringement action can quickly add up, as can the loss in revenue and reputation from allowing such sites to continue trading unchallenged. Consider approaching your domain name portfolio as you would your other IP assets; in particular, by: holding the records in one central location with clear management responsibilities; putting in place clear processes for registration, monitoring and enforcement; and, undertaking regular reviews to ensure that the portfolio as registered and maintained is aligned with your trademark portfolio and wider business activity.

5. Who? Websites have historically been the territory of the marketing team, and there is a lot of sense in keeping things that way. However, any team responsible for domain name registrations needs to have at least a basic understanding of trademark rights as they crossover with domain name law and practice. Consider running training sessions with your marketing team to set out your rules as to trademark use, and to provide them with clear channels of communication should they come up against third-party registrations or other online activity that contravenes those rules.

It’s not what you like that matters – you have to consider your customers.

Pete Goodrum. Writer, Broadcaster, Consultant.

The part of the marketing process that’s concerned with conveying your message to potential customers is a constantly moveable feast. Time was that it was easy and all- embracing to call it ‘advertising’. As the process became more complex we added extra labels, like ‘sales promotion’, and embraced ‘public relations’ into the marketing mix. ‘Marketing Communications Company’ became the new ‘Advertising Agency’ for a while, and then something unprecedented happened. Suddenly we had ‘Digital Agencies’.

This wasn’t inappropriate because the rise in importance of digital communications had called for the emergence of specialists. What was odd was that, for the first time, we were branding communications, or advertising, businesses by the medium in which they specialised. I can recall no ‘Newspaper Advertising Agency’, nor ‘TV Advertising Agency’.

The increase in choice of media available though was welcome, and has brought about advances and opportunities in promoting businesses and brands. But, was there a danger of ‘medium overtaking message’? Was there so much enthusiasm to use digital media that sometimes they were selected, and messages constructed for them, when they were perhaps not the sole, nor indeed best, medium to reach the target audience?

And that brings the argument to the fundamental point about advertising and marketing communications that has remained unchanged throughout the decades of evolving media choices. Identifying your target audience is crucial. Establishing the best medium, or media, to reach them is the next and equally important issue. And then, most importantly of all, create the message that, carried by those media, will enthuse and inspire that target audience to buy from you. Here’s the thing. That message must be appropriate to that audience. It must give them a reason to buy. And it must speak their language.

If that language is not yours, or the visual treatment of the advertising is not to your personal taste, it doesn’t matter. It’s what communicates best with your audience that counts.

Which is where the professional advertising practitioner comes in. The writer, the art director, the strategist; they know what’s needed to do the job. You wouldn’t disagree with the electrician rewiring your house because you don’t like the colour of the wires, or the surgeon about to make you better because you think another procedure would be better. So why would you disagree with an advertising professional because you don’t like yellow, or sentences beginning with and. And that’s something that happens, every day.

It’s unlikely that an external advertising or marketing professional knows your product or service better than you do. But there’s a very real chance that you don’t know the techniques of promotion as well as them.

It’s simple really. When it comes to advertising, in all its forms and media, it’s not what you like that matters – you have to consider your customers.

The recent changes to the Married Couples Allowance for individuals born after 6th April 1935 will allow you to transfer some of your Personal Allowance to your partner. This update has not yet been put into effect and interested parties can register their interest on the Government website who willemail youwhen the changes are fully implemented.

Personal Allowance is the figure that you as an individual are able to earn before being taxed, currently £10,000 and increasing to £10,600 on the 6th April. If your income for the 2015/2016 tax year is less than your Personal Allowance you may be able to reduce your husband, wife or civil partner’s tax by up to £212 (10%).

This is positive news for couples where one of you has zero earnings or £1,060 or more of their Personal Allowance remaining – by utilising the new marriage allowance you can make full use of the initiative and claim back the £212.

Eligibility

In order to claim Marriage Allowance, the following conditions apply:

• You are married or in a civil partnership
• You have an annual income of less than £10,600 – including pensions, savings and investments
• Your spouse or civil partner has an annual income of between £10,601 and £42,385
• You are both born after 6th April 1935

The Married Couples Allowance

There is also an allowance for married couples where one or both of you are born before 6th April 1935. This allowance can reduce your tax bill by £314 to £816.50 a year. This can be claimed either through your annual tax return or, if you aren’t required to fill one you can contact HMRC and inform them with details of your marital date and the date of birth of both you and your partner.

To get advice on this update, contact your nearest office and speak to one of our specialist tax advisors.

www.astonshaw.co.uk

You can tell it’s election season because politicians are wooing the business community. Whatever your view on the policies, one recent announcement is good for Norfolk and Suffolk businesses. That is the extension of the super connected cities broadband voucher scheme to Norwich and Ipswich.

Like many of you, we were disappointed not to see Norwich in the super connected cities initiative when it launched in 2011. The scheme’s £150m Urban Broadband Fund provides connection vouchers worth up to £3,000 to help SMEs access superfast broadband. It is already available in 22 cities including Cambridge and Peterborough but, up to now, the New Anglia region has missed out.

On 19 February, the government announced that the “broadband connection voucher scheme …will be available in Norwich and Ipswich from 1 April.” While it is an unfortunate choice of date, you’d be foolish to ignore this opportunity to boost your business’s connectivity and competitiveness. Over 5,000 SMEs have taken up the offer with thousands more expected to do so by 31 March 2015.

Collaboration is key to connectivity

We already have fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) across much of Norwich but installing fibre to the premises (FTTP) can still be prohibitively expensive for many businesses. Even £3,000 in vouchers might not cover the full cost of connection. However, according to the BBC, the scheme has a little known feature that could really boost uptake – the ability for businesses to pool their resources.

Apparently, EU competition rules originallyprevented the government from telling people about this feature but that has now changed. However, the only example I can find of such collaboration is at Perseverance Works, a collaborative workspace in Shoreditch (as mentioned in the BBC report). The idea appears to be the brainchild of The Independent Networks Cooperative Association – and anyone interested in exploring it further might like to contact them to find out how it worked.

Supercharge your business

The benefits of superfast broadband are probably obvious to most of you. They include improved customer experience, faster file sharing, enhanced video-calls and more cost effective use of cloud services. As well as boosting individual businesses, this type of investment should enable East Anglia to maintain its position as “one of the fastest growing regions in the UK.”

Naturally, there are various eligibility criteria for the vouchers – you will need to check these carefully when applying. If you run an SME, charity, social enterprise or are a sole trader, you can use the scheme to connect your business premises; this apparently includes your home if it is your main office. The cost of installing a new broadband connection to your business has to be more than £100 and you have to sign a minimum 6-month contract with your supplier. Norwich City Council has now launched the scheme and has full details, including a postcode checker, on it site.

There are now over 600 registered suppliers to the scheme, including many of the big names in the broadband telephony business. While that may seem daunting, we are sure organisations such as NWES, the New Anglia Growth Hub, and Norfolk Chamber will gear up to help local SMEs navigate the application process. We hope this will lead to a higher take-up than elsewhere in the UK, so confirming our region’s appetite for a high-tech future.

If you’d like to discuss any points raised in this blog, please contact me on twitter or by email.