Member News

The senior management team of one of the region’s largest office supply companies has successfully completed a buyout of the business.

Mayday Office Equipment Services, based in Norwich, has been taken over by Operations Director Karen Aldred, Commercial Director Jamie Mulhall and Sales Director Adam Northcut.

Leading East Anglian corporate finance and accountancy firm, Larking Gowen, helped with the successful buyout of majority shareholder and former Managing Director Graham Cassie.

Karen Aldred, who becomes the new MD, said that in the past the company had been approached by large national groups for takeover but had always managed to remain in the control of the people running the business. “We see ourselves as a local company providing the best possible service we can for other local businesses. We know our clients well and they know us. We’re very proud to keep the business running with the same level of localised personal service,” Karen said. “The corporate finance team at Larking Gowen were a real help. We always dealt with the same people and they were always there to pick up the phone and point us in the right direction,” she added.

Mayday supplies photocopiers, printers and other office equipment to businesses in Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of Cambridgeshire. The company also offers IT support, which is a growing sector within the business. It was established on 1 May 1979, hence the name.

Ian Nelson, Larking Gowen Senior Manager, said: “Mayday has a strong local pedigree built up by the hard work and skill of the management buyout team. It is pleasing to see them taking full control to continue their good work and reap the rewards. “It was great to work with such a positive team and be able to guide them through the potential pitfalls and steer them towards the opportunities.”

Areas that Larking Gowen’s corporate finance team assisted included advice on valuation, commercial and tax structure, bank funding, deal management, liaison with the legal team and advice on financial and taxation warranties and indemnities to protect the management buyout team.

Outgoing majority shareholder Mr Cassie, who is staying on as an IT consultant for the business, said: “I’m delighted with Karen, Jamie and Adam’s further investment and acquisition, and I’m sure that the very successful local technology business will go from strength to strength.

“I’ve been proud to lead Mayday over the last six years, and would like to thank all Mayday’s staff and customers for their support.”

Photo credit: James Vivian (L to R):  Ian Nelson, Larking Gowen, Jamie Mulhall, Karen Aldred, Adam Northcut of Mayday Office Equipment Services.  

We are thrilled to announce that the Tudor Lodge Consultants Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team is working closely with Keren’s Nursery, an award-winning chain of nurseries in North London. Keren’s Nursery has a number of branches in Hampstead Garden Suburb, Belsize Park and Holland Park, all of which are hugely popular. We are working to increase the online leads acquired by Keren’s Nursery in the form of enquiries for visits to see the nurseries and placements of children.

Started in 2004 by the current directors, Keren’s Nursery has grown from being run in a house with just three children, to many more children being cared for and educated across three growing branches. Furthermore, they have been repeatedly awarded an Outstanding rating by Ofsted.

What We are Doing for Keren’s Nursery

Keren’s Nursery approached us with an already functioning website, but have found that it is not fully fit for purpose and does not properly and efficiently serve users and prospective customers and clients. With a distinct lack of leads through their website, getting up the rankings on Google is more important than ever.

As with many SEO projects, the first step is cleaning up and optimising what they have to ensure that they get maximum benefit from the works already completed in the past:

Secure Hosting – Their website was not hosted on a securely encrypted server with an SSL certificate. This meant that the site was potentially vulnerable to malicious attacks from both bots and hackers online. This is something Google does not like and looks down upon. By installing and implementing an SSL certificate, Keren’s Nursery’s website has ben secured and now presents users with the desired ‘https’ prefix.

Meta Data – Another of Google’s crucial factors for good SEO and a strongly ranked site is optimised meta data, comprising the meta titles and meta descriptions of a website. With little meta data present, we are working on that of Keren’s Nursery to ensure that Google is able to crawl and appropriately rank their website.

Broken Links – Broken links on websites point users and therefore Google and other search engines to a ‘dead’ page, usually in the form of a 404-error page. As an established site, having had little attention to SEO detail in the past, we have worked to clean up many broken links for the website, making for a faster and better-read website for both Google and users who will no longer be sent to dead, non-existent pages.

Online PR and Links – Ensuring a website has strong online PR and strong links pointing to it is crucial in the world of SEO. By having strong links, websites demonstrate an increased degree of trust with Google, which acts as a trust signal for search engines, often leading to higher rankings. Furthermore, with much of the online PR generated from websites with larger readerships, Keren’s Nursery can expect increased traffic to their site of good quality.

Our Plans Moving Forward

With so much achieved so far at this early stage, we are planning to improve the look and feel of the Keren’s Nursery website to improve the user experience as well as the SEO and conversion rates. we look forward to many more successes with the whole team at Keren’s Nurseries.

Business owners and self-employed people will gather at The Feathers at Holt on Tuesday 19th March to meet new business contacts over coffee and biscuits. Hosted by Leanne Castle of MENTA and GENIX, the business support specialists, Coffee Means Business is a friendly, stand-up networking event which has been held on a monthly basis in north Norfolk since 2016.

Leanne Castle said, “Over 20 people attend our events which are relaxed and informal. We always receive very positive comments on the friendliness and easy format of the mornings. The power of face to face networking to promote business services and products, should never be underestimated.

“Making new connections and gaining recommendations are important ways of building a successful business and networking is a great way to achieve this.”

Coffee Means Business will be held from 9.30am until 11.30am, there are no membership or joining fees, just £5 per person, payable on arrival. Booking isn’t essential.

North Norfolk District Council commissioned MENTA and GENIX three years ago to organise and host Coffee Means Business in the north Norfolk area. They could see a need for a regular networking opportunity for businesses which didn’t involve expensive membership fees.

For more details regarding Coffee Means Business go to www.genix.org.uk or call 0800 096 3013.

Flagship Group has today (Friday 8 March) launched a ‘Women in Leadership’ Mentoring Programme, in partnership with City College Norwich, to support women to be the best they can be in the workplace.

A number of female leaders from across the Group will be trained as Mentors to inspire and support females from across the group to reach their full potential.

The aim of the programme is to:

• To share experience and support personal and professional development
• Enable individuals to be the best they can be
• Support females to develop skills to support career progression
• Support Flagship’s model of working, its approach to continuous improvement

Over the coming months, City College Norwich will deliver bespoke training to the Flagship Mentors which will include:

• Principles of Mentoring
• Benefits of Mentoring to Flagship Group
• Tools & Techniques
• Retaining and advancing women in business
• Unlocking the full potential in women

Director of People and Places at Flagship, Lisa Collen, said: “We are really excited to be launching a formal mentoring programme. We have lots of talented women across the business and we hope this will help them get to the top of their career.

“The programme is another way we are investing in our staff by sharing best practice internally as well as externally through events such as industry sector conferences.”

Once Mentors have undertaken their training, mentoring sessions with the Mentees will take place. *RFT Services Field Manager Linda Worden has been identified as a Mentee due to her potential and ambition to progress. Linda said: “I joined RFT as a painter and decorator and was recently promoted, so I now support a Trade team where we provide kitchen and bathroom upgrades in our customers’ homes.

“It’s fantastic that there continues to be opportunities to progress as Flagship are always looking at ways to support their staff. I’m really looking forward to the new programme and hope that I can gain lots of new skills to help my career and also then go on to inspire other women who are thinking about working in trade.”

Course Leader in the Teacher Development Unit at City College Norwich, Denise Troughton said: “Mentoring is a great way for organisations to support staff to realise their full potential. We are excited to be providing this bespoke training for Flagship and look forward to working with the new mentors to make a real difference within the Group.”

Flagship Group’s Chief Executive and six members of the housing provider’s senior management team have been back to the classroom this week in support of National Apprenticeships Week (4-8 March).

The senior members of staff have each spent a day learning as they shadowed apprentices across the business in roles from kitchen fitters to finance.

Flagship are helping to celebrate the success of apprenticeships while at the same time encouraging even more people to choose them as a pathway to a great career. Since launching its Apprenticeship Programme in 2014, the housing association has recruited 44 apprentices with 28 people currently undertaking courses.

Yesterday (Wednesday 6 March), Chief Executive David McQuade spent time in Dereham with *RFT Services Electrician Max Smy to experience what it is like to be an apprentice at Flagship.

David said: “It’s been great to have the opportunity to learn from those undertaking an apprenticeship with us. It’s been insightful to see first hand what a typical day involves for one of our trade apprentices, and I’ve learnt a lot.

“Our Apprenticeships Programme offers a real prospect of permanent employment at the end which is why it’s so important that we invest in our potential future workforce.”

Max Smy said: “It’s been great to meet David, for him to come out on site and see what my role entails.

“My apprenticeship came about after I completed a BTEC in construction. It gave me an insight into electrics and that inspired me to undertake my apprenticeship. The course is great as I’m provided with all the tools and equipment I need and learning lots of new skills.”

Other members of the management team who took part in the ‘back to the tools’ experience were:

• Deputy Chief Executive Helen Walsham shadowed IT Support Apprentice Joe Collins
• Chief Financial Officer David Armstrong shadowed Fleet Admin Apprentice Ross Burton
• Director of People and Places Lisa Collen shadowed Finance Apprentice Joshua Pardon
• Director of Business Growth Andrew Yuill shadowed Kitchen Fitter Apprentice Aaron Cummings
• RFT Services Operations Manager Mark Kirby shadowed Finance Apprentice Ali Burghall
• RFT Head of Operations (Trade) Dale Wordley shadowed Bright Futures Apprentices Matt Levesley and Ellie Colk

With over 20 years of experience in the housing sector, Flagship’s skilled staff are keen to pass on their knowledge to the next generation, hoping to make a difference in the housing industry.

*RFT Services is Flagship’s in-house repairs and maintenance subsidiary company.

January saw the UK network of 200 franchise-operated practices provide client services worth over £5 million during a very busy tax return deadline period.

TaxAssist Accountants, the UK’s largest small business tax and accountancy franchise, is celebrating a record-breaking start to the year. Figures for January revealed that for the first time in its history, the UK network of franchisees delivered services to its clients worth more than £5million in a single month.

Karl Sandall, Chief Executive Director, said: “With over 200 franchises trading from over 300 visible and accessible shops and offices across the UK, the TaxAssist Accountants network is ideally placed to support any clients requiring our services. We expected our franchisees to be busy, especially on the back of the TV advertising campaign we ran leading up to and during the busy tax return season – and they were!

“The £5million mark is a real milestone and represents on average £25,000 banked by each of our franchises. I would like to take this opportunity to praise our accountants and their staff for their hard work during January, as well as thanking the whole team at the Support Centre for their assistance, including those working evenings and weekends to cope with this unprecedented demand.

“Making Tax Digital for VAT will be rolled out in April for businesses with a turnover above the £85,000 VAT threshold, representing the biggest change to the UK tax system for decades.

Having researched, trialled and rolled out new software and training programmes to our franchisees and their staff, our network is ready and ideally placed to handle the anticipated extra requirements of all small businesses.”

If you are interested in finding out more about joining the TaxAssist Accountants network, contact Nikki Haythorne on 0800 0188297 for an initial conversation. There is scope for a further 200 franchises around the UK – do contact us to see if your preferred area is available. We look forward to hearing from you.

Veolia Environmental Trust offers grants of between £10,000 and £75,000 for capital improvement projects at a single site with discrete start and end dates. Match funding of at least 10% is required. Successful applicants will need to pay 10% of the awarded amount to the landfill operator from a third party contributor.

Projects should fall under one of the following categories:

• Community buildings and rooms, including community centres, village halls, community spaces within religious buildings, and Scout or Girl Guiding buildings.
• Outdoor Spaces, including public parks, nature reserves, community gardens, footpaths, bridleways and cycle-paths.
• Play and recreation, including play areas, skateparks, Multi Use Games Areas, sports grounds, pavilions and changing rooms.
• Biodiversity projects – applications from registered Environmental Bodies with projects that meet ENTRUST requirements

To be eligible, projects must:

• Be open to the wider general public for at least 104 days a year without any limit or unreasonable restrictions of use.
• Have a total cost of under £250,000, including VAT and professional costs.
• Have already secured at least 10% of the total cost.
• Have secured all permissions (eg, planning).
• Be completed within 12 months.

Constituted not-for-profit organisations can apply as long as their project is located within five miles of a Veolia Environmental Services facility. This could be a landfill site, Energy Recovery Facility or Materials Recycling Facility.

There is no deadline for starting the process of applying for a grant; however, each funding application phase for both Stage 1 and Stage 2 is made available quarterly following the end of the previous phase.

There are four funding rounds each year.

The next phase for Stage 1 applications is 1 March 2019 and 30 May 2019 for projects taking place between 18 September 2019 and 6 January 2020.

More information can be found by following the link:

Veolia Environmental Trust

We’re continuing to analyse the responses we’ve received through the consultation, particularly the letter and email responses and the ‘free text’ elements of the consultation survey, so we don’t have a complete picture of the consultation responses as yet. We plan to publish the full results when we announce our preferred route, alongside all the other information which has informed our decision-making – the date is to be decided due to a change in the County Council’s constitution (which will see us move from a committee system to a cabinet system later this spring).

However, because we know there is likely to be significant interest in the consultation results, we wanted to share some of the headline facts and figures with you at this point. These are:

• The consultation website was viewed by 3,475 people and a total of 1,245 people came to 17 consultation events staffed by members of the Norwich Western Link project team.
• We received more than 1,900 responses in total, with 1,825 responding via the consultation survey available on the consultation website and 104 sending their responses by letter or email.
• Initial analysis of the responses to the consultation survey suggests there is strong agreement among respondents that there is a need for a Norwich Western Link road, with Option D ranking as the most popular solution, Option C the second most popular and Option A the least popular.

As mentioned, there is still a lot of important information we need to consider which will help us identify a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link. The project team are continuing to work hard to gather and take account of all this information before any conclusions are made.  

Taking water from the air

We want to communicate our services in the most effective way and encourage as many businesses as possible to engage with us. TMS Media have been commissioned to produce a communications and marketing strategy for the growth programme and you can help shape that by completing this survey. If you provide your name and contact details, you will be entered into a draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher*. The survey takes just 5 – 8 minutes to complete and will really help us develop and improve our services.

Complete the survey

* £50 Amazon voucher provided by TMS Media. Draw to take place on Monday 18 March 2019. 

We want to communicate our services in the most effective way and encourage as many businesses as possible to engage with us. TMS Media have been commissioned to produce a communications and marketing strategy for the growth programme and you can help shape that by completing this survey. If you provide your name and contact details, you will be entered into a draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher*. The survey takes just 5 – 8 minutes to complete and will really help us develop and improve our services.

Complete the survey

* £50 Amazon voucher provided by TMS Media. Draw to take place on Monday 18 March 2019. 

Over the last twelve months, Freebridge employees have raised £4,181 for the King’s Lynn Foodbank through a range of fundraising activities.

Each April Freebridge’s employees vote on a new organisation to support throughout the year, and for 2018/2019 they chose the Foodbank that operates out of King’s Lynn.

In order to raise money for the charity, employees arranged and took part in a variety of activities including a golf day, quiz nights, a World Cup sweepstake and a fishing day.

Tony Hall, Chief Executive of Freebridge, said: “I’m very proud of the efforts our employees, Tenant Panel members and Board members have made in respect of raising money for the King’s Lynn Foodbank. Over the years we’ve raised money for many organisations doing valuable work across West Norfolk, and this year I’m particularly pleased that they’ve been able to raise so much.”

Sandra Morgan, Volunteer and Fundraiser at the King’s Lynn Foodbank, said: “We would like to thank Freebridge for choosing the Kings Lynn Foodbank as their charity for 2018/2019, and for all their hard work. Also, to all the very generous donations of raffle prizes for both events from local businesses including Congham Hall, Downham Market Garden Centre, Shaun Hagen Motors and Dunston Hall.

“Fundraising is not an easy task, but on behalf of the Kings Lynn Foodbank, a huge thank you to everyone for their kindness, contribution and support in helping local people in crisis, it is greatly appreciated.”