Amid renewed calls for more housing to be urgently built across the country, Flagship Group is aiming to provide more homes for people in need in Norfolk.
The housing provider across the East of England has submitted plans to Breckland Council this week for a further 49 homes and public open space in Great Ellingham.
The properties off Attleborough Road would be in addition to the 39 homes and public open space provision granted planning consent in 2016 on land immediately adjacent. These works are anticipated to commence before next summer.
The new application includes a mix of 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses and bungalows with 60% for sale and 40% affordable housing. The affordable housing will be owned and managed by Flagship and will include a proportion of shared ownership properties to assist first time buyers on to the housing ladder.
The proposal will help Breckland Council meet the current shortfall in its five-year land supply, which is a requirement of the National Planning Policy Framework. In July, Breckland announced it is unable to demonstrate a five-year land supply, with calculations ranging between 2.4 – 4.6 years.
Tony Tann, Managing Director of Flagship Homes (Development) said: “It’s great news for Flagship to be undertaking its first mixed tenure development in Breckland, enabling us to provide new homes for people in need. With recent announcements indicating that 300,000 homes need to be built each year across the UK, we’re glad we can help to meet the housing shortage. I therefore hope this will be one of many new developments we can take forward across the region in the coming years.”
Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict transforms uncomfortable encounters into stronger relationships.
Workplace conflict is inevitable. Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict helps learners improve self-awareness around conflict behaviors. Rather than focus on a step-by-step process for conflict resolution, Everything DiSC Productive Conflict helps learners curb destructive behaviors so that conflict can become more productive, ultimately improving workplace results and relationships.
By increasing self-awareness around conflict behaviors, Everything DiSC Productive Conflict helps learners effectively respond to the uncomfortable and unavoidable challenges of workplace conflict.
A 22-page Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile provides an in-depth report that highlights techniques to improve self awareness around conflict behaviors. With strategies to curb destructive responses, learners discover how to step back and reframe productive responses to conflict situations.
Cost Effective Recruitment People Management and Development disruptor Human Capital Department offer a recruitment service which is different to what is typically offered by recruitment and employment agencies… “Our pricing model is different – rather than charging 10% or 15% of starting salary we charge a Fixed Fee of £995 for each recruitment assignment” said Peter Lawrence, Director of Human Capital Department.
The quality of service we provide is also assured – we are a member of the Chamber of Commerce and our consultants are individual members of the Chartered Insitute of Personnel and Development [CIPD], which is our quality mark and means we are qualified to guide employers to ensure that they adhere to rules and regulations and apply best practice recruitment and selection processes and procedures.
We go the extra mile, as well as conducting the initial pre-screening interviews and providing a short-list of suitable candidates, we can sit in on recruitment interviews if required, and can take up references to complete the process.
Once you have the right person on board we can also advise on Induction and Performance Management ensuring things go smoothly from day one.
Cost Effective Recruitment People Management and Development disruptor Human Capital Department offer a recruitment service which is different to what is typically offered by recruitment and employment agencies… “Our pricing model is different – rather than charging 10% or 15% of starting salary we charge a Fixed Fee of £995 for each recruitment assignment” said Peter Lawrence, Director of Human Capital Department.
The quality of service we provide is also assured – we are a member of the Chamber of Commerce and our consultants are individual members of the Chartered Insitute of Personnel and Development [CIPD], which is our quality mark and means we are qualified to guide employers to ensure that they adhere to rules and regulations and apply best practice recruitment and selection processes and procedures.
We go the extra mile, as well as conducting the initial pre-screening interviews and providing a short-list of suitable candidates, we can sit in on recruitment interviews if required, and can take up references to complete the process.
Once you have the right person on board we can also advise on Induction and Performance Management ensuring things go smoothly from day one.
Active Norfolk’s Wrap Up and Step Out walking challenge is back this year to encourage you and your colleagues to reduce stress, improve wellbeing and get active by heading out for a walk this November.
Not only are we privileged enough to live in one of the most naturally beautiful parts of the world here in Norfolk, but now just by going out and exploring it, Active Norfolk is giving you the chance to win a host of wonderful prizes by logging your activity and sending in your photographs.
Whether your walk consists of a lunchtime stroll around town, a weekend ramble through the forest or a hike along coastal clifftops, you could be in with a chance of winning the prizes, including Osprey Daysacks, Klean Kanteen drinks bottles and cinema vouchers, simply by putting one foot in front of the other.
Plus, an additional weekly prize is up for grabs throughout November for the best photos from your walks that capture the beauty of Norfolk in autumn.
The same Norfolk Local Action Groups that were set up to deliver LEADER business growth funding now also distribute the new LIFT funding for the benefit of small and medium sized SME rural businesses and the local, rural economy generally. LIFT stands for Local Investment in Future Talent and can offer 50% funding to projects that will enable people living in rural areas to find paid employment or to start their own businesses. LIFT can also contribute up to 50% of staff training costs for those currently employed in rural businesses.
The funding comes from the Europeans Social Fund and grants in the region of £5k -£50k are available for approved projects.
Applications can be from individual businesses but they are particularly keen to hear from business networks or groups of businesses working in partnership. Also training providers that could offer staff training to a number of business customers that is subsidised by LIFT.
Companies that have links with local community organisations could also usefully pass on the message that LIFT is offering grants for projects that will work intensively with people to prepare for and find work.
Leathes Prior’s Charity of the Year, OPEN Youth Trust has successfully submitted an entry to this year’s Aviva Community Fund for a minibus to support their outreach team. The 15-seater, second-hand minibus with diabled access will be used to collect young people, in and around Norfolk from schools and Youth clubs so that they can avail of all the activities and classes at OPEN. OPEN Youth Trust was established in 2006 to give young people in Norfolk the life skills and confidence to maximise their potential. They now make a positive difference to the lives of over 4,500 young people each year through their drop-in youth hub in the city centre, workshops, gym, dance studio and climbing wall. OPEN offer volunteering and mentoring workshops designed to get young people work ready and to help them to get to grips with the day to day challenges of independent living. The service is free of charge to young people and funded through their commercial activities. However, young people in rural areas of Norfolk are somewhat isolated and can miss out on the opportunities OPEN provides to get out and about, make friends and develop new activities and passions. OPEN want to be able to engage with these young people and offer them somewhere to go, someone to talk to, and something to do. However, Norfolk is a rural and sparsely populated county and it remains difficult to engage young people in geographically isolated areas. Transport links are poor in most of the county and, often, young people aged between 11-19 cannot afford public transport. Those who have physical disabilities can face further challenges. Gaining funds for the minibus would mean that OPEN can make the trip to the young people and pick them up outside of school hours, allowing them full access to their services before taking them home safely in the evening. This would have a dramatic and positive effect on the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable young people across our county. This is what one young person said to OPEN Youth Trust to describe how he feels about wanting to get to OPEN and his struggles due to the lack of public transport: “I would LOVE to be able to go to OPEN in the evenings. They do really cool stuff, it is great fun and loads of my Norwich friends go there. I really feel like I am missing out but I have no way of actually getting there, so please vote for OPEN and make this happen so that I can join my friends”. OPEN has successfully got through stage one in the bidding process which is now open to the public to vote. Voting is easy; just follow this link register an email address or login with your Facebook account and cast your votes – you have until midday 21st November 2017.
LIFT is a grants scheme run by Norfolk County Council and funded by the European Social Fund that helps people build their skills and find work, and supports local businesses in offering work trials. Our new website promotes the programme and makes it easy for applicants to find the information they need. Another “intelligent website design”.
The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team at Tudor Lodge are pleased to announce that we are working with SPF Private Clients (https://spf.co.uk/), who have recently celebrated their 20th birthday. SPF were born out of Savills Property Finance and underwent a management buyout and an exciting rebrand.
Our team have been working closely with SPF on their online presence, discoverability and their brand exposure to a far-reaching target audience. SPF Private Clients provide 4 distinct areas of expertise and service which are: mortgages, insurance, wealth management and commercial finance. Each of these areas are broken down by SPF into verticals that are marketed to their client base and customers.
Unlike typical brokerages and financial services providers, SPF are able to arrange the best solutions for each case and client on a case by case basis. This means that clients of SPF are afforded world-class expertise, high levels of service and exclusive products across the relevant markets. SPF have however had their fair share of challenges online and this is one of the reasons why they have brought in our team.
Having rebranded in the last decade, SPF have seen the need to build a new online brand presence and as part of this target a number of new and previously ranked terms. This is in addition to the desired improvements they continue to seek for their site.
Starting Points
Starting on SPF’s website allowed us to discover that a number of SEO basics had not been fully or properly implemented from past work on the site. This included the following factors, all of which are crucial SEO ranking factors:
– Meta Data
– H Title Use
– Schema
– Backlinking
– Site Speed and Response Times
We have and continue to address all of these points on an ongoing basis. Their previous meta data was not properly optimised with meta titles being too long or duplicated across the site and meta descriptions being absent altogether. We therefore cleaned up all of their meta data, insuring every page has its own data and unique offering. This has already seen various positive shifts on Google Search Results.
SPF were also not making proper and optimised use of their H titles. H titles are a critical SEO ranking factor as they tell Google what the on-page content is about and what is to come. As with the meta data, we have fine-tuned and optimised all of their H titles, paying particular attention to their H1 titles (as these are afforded the highest priority.)
Schema has also been fully rolled out across the site and this allows search engines to better ‘understand’ what is on each website page and the context.
SPF enjoy a strong presence in the media and they have a number of high value and strong backlinks. This includes many links from the likes of world-renowned industry bodies, new outlets and industry experts. However, many of these have not provided SPF with the correctly optimised backlink and so we have commenced a reclamation, reaching out and reclaiming these links for SPF’s online benefit.
We have also worked with SPF’s existing developers on the speed of the website which is important for user experience as well as mobile and tablet use. This has seen the site jump to more than 70% site speed across all platforms.
The Results
Although this project is in its early stages and there is still much more work to come, SPF have already seen numerous high competition phrases reach the lofty heights of page 1 of Google. This includes the likes of ‘private finance,’ ‘residential mortgages’ and others. Building on this progress and that of the work to come, we are looking forward to building a strong, fruitful and successful partnership with SPF Private Clients for the future.
Norfolk Chamber member Human Capital Department – the people management and development experts in East Angia – have released a free questionnaire which enables companies to verify whether or not they are complaint with the varous rules and regulations relating to people management and development.
Once the questionnaire has been completed human capital department are able to produce a short report which uses a trafic light system – red, amber or green – to highlight any areas of possible concern.
“The people management and development space is highly regulated and continuously changing – recent examples include General Data Protection Regulations [GDPR] and Supreme Court Ruling that makes Employment Tribunal Fees unlawful – and it is difficult for organisations to stay on top of these changes, especially if they do not have a specialist personnel manager in-house.” said Peter Lawrence, Director and Founder of Human Capital Department.
Human Capital Department can help by providing this simple questionnaire and free report and by providing guidance on any areas which the report identifys as [amber or red] of being of concern.
We are very excited to announce that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and development teams at Tudor Lodge Consultants are working with the Southdown Gun Club to improve their online presence and positioning on Google Search. An award-winning gun club and shooting school, the Southdown Gun Club are a very unique client with exciting products on offer.
In addition to their West Sussex shooting club and school, they also have a well-renowned shop known as the ‘Gun Room’ which sells all of the necessary and desired additions for amateur and professional shooters. Southdown Gun Club offer a variety of shooting experiences which includes clay pigeon shooting, skeet shooting, target shooting and some truly unique day experiences such as archery and axe throwing.
However, they approached the team at Tudor Lodge Consultants with the problem that as the premier shooting ground of West Sussex, not enough people and customers have been finding their website and engaging with their offerings. We have therefore devised a comprehensive SEO and technical website strategy which together are already showing signs of progress and the huge potential of the Gun Club and its adjoining shop’s website.
The Challenges Faced
The Southdown Gun Club website, being built on WordPress has a huge degree of potential. However, although the site’s appearance and feel are very good, serving customers superbly, the technical aspects of the website need much work. The website was not being properly crawled and ranked by Google and other search engines and therefore, the Southdown Gun Club were not enjoying the fruits of their success and the huge opportunities for customers to find them.
Moreover, the site was not configured to run and be engaged with via mobile and tablet devices, a now crucial Google ranking factor. The website has also traditionally not been targeting potential and prospective customers by targeting keyword and relevant brand and generic search terms.
What We Are Doing
As a result of the challenges faced by Southdown Gun Club, our team have been working to improve a variety of aspects of the site and its online offerings including:
– How the site is crawled by Google
– Site speed
– Mobile functionality
– Targeting of specifically relevant keywords and search terms
– Improved user experience and user journeys
– Improved site architecture
We initially had a detailed consultation with the client and have now devised their keyword strategy after performing in-depth keyword research and analysis. We have used this information and data to help with our initiation of the implementation of the website’s meta data. The meta data is one of the most important factors for Google as it allows pages and their content to be read, ranked and properly ‘understood,’ allowing for better rankings and positions online.
We have also been working with the development team to improve site speed, which is on the up. Southdown Gun Club are currently enjoying site speeds of 71% for mobile and 95% for desktop. This is a very important factor as it allows easy navigation and better user journeys throughout the site.
Further to this, we are also performing a full audit of images on the site, compressing those that are too large to further increase the site’s speed. Whilst the Southdown Gun Club have an adequate link profile, we have also been required to remove an array of toxic links from the backlink profile of the website and we will be working on an improved and logical strategy of building strong, relevant and clean links that point to the Southdown Gun Club website; acting as a strong trust signal for Google and other search engines of the relevant and importance of the website.
Southdown Gun Club have already at this early stage seen their website achieve top 5 positions on Google for the competitive terms of ‘gun clubs’ and ‘gun club,’ some of the most competitive and most popular search terms in the industry.
We are looking forward to building on the progress and positive outlook for the Southdown Gun Club, takin their site to the lofty heights of Google’s page 1 for further terms.
We are very excited to be able to showcase our IT services and solutions within a brand new website.
The Breakwater team worked closely with local design agency, Solid Block, to create a site that clearly outlined how we support clients and their IT systems; delivering greater value from the technology they invest in and providing long-term business growth.
Our approach to delivering IT is to focus on clients’ specific requirements and the results they want to achieve – increased productivity, reduced risk, seamless scalability.
Within our new website we reveal the core components that are the building blocks for future growth. ‘A Platform to Power your Business’ is essentially a secure system that forms the basis of a client’s IT network. We have taken our collective knowledge and experience to provide IT support based on a shared, and tried and tested, understanding of which solutions work well together. Every component we recommend has a deliberate place and purpose and is proactively managed to ensure systems run smoothly.
By outsourcing your IT services to Breakwater, you receive essential solutions as standard – including backup, anti-virus, email security, device maintenance and licensing compliance. We also offer consultative and specialist project work, innovative backup and disaster recovery, cloud solutions, telecoms and CCTV services.
We hope you enjoy taking a look around our new site and learning more about the way in which IT can power your business – keep an eye out for our rather addictive new game and see if you can top the leaderboard!