Member News

June 2017 saw the first franchisees to graduate from the LEAD management and leadership course, which has been specifically designed for TaxAssist Accountants franchisees and senior practice staff.

Managing a practice requires more than the ability to manage processes, you also need to understand how to manage staff and clients. The LEAD Management Programme was designed to help franchisees and staff to develop their skills as a leader to help build and manage an effective team.

The feedback TaxAssist received from those attending the 2015/2017 LEAD Management course has been extremely positive:

• “Brilliant course, it has made a massive difference to how I support others and work overall.”
• “Having franchisees and staff on the same course was especially useful, comments and suggestions have been from quite different perspectives.”
• “I have loved this programme and feel that it has been very beneficial to my role.”
• “The course gave valuable ‘working on the business’ time.”
• “It has been an informative two years that has increased my confidence. It has been really good being able to meet up with other offices and share ideas and examples.”

Sarah Robertson, TaxAssist Accountants Group Operations Director comments, “Here at TaxAssist Accountants we pride ourselves on the quality of training and support we offer to our network.  We know that it is vital to get franchisees off to a great start early on in their business, but we also recognise that as franchises mature, franchisees’ thoughts turn to managing staff, exit strategy and succession planning, hence the introduction of the LEAD course. 

“The course has proven to be massively popular and the feedback has been fantastic. I’m pleased to say we are already planning our next course which is attracting a lot of interest.”

June 2017

JMS Group have had the pleasure of working with travel comparison site Medical Travel Compared for over two years, and were delighted when we won a pitch to create and produce their 2017 campaign.  Our idea was a little ambitious in the sense that we wanted a true holiday feel to the commercial, but were filming in Norfolk in Springtime, rather than Summer in Spain!  

The purpose of the commercial was to succinctly convey the ‘3 easy steps’ that it takes to compare and purchase travel insurance through MTC’s comparison website – even for those with a medical condition or being over 50.  We did this through the portrayal of a holiday maker in his 50’s enjoying choosing his swimwear and comparing it through a voice over to the choice of his insurance providers, following up with the 3 easy steps of using the site echoed by the 3 easy steps it takes for him to jump into the pool to truly get his holiday started!  

We were fortunate that the weather held out on the filming day, but some clever extra lighting, set design and careful colour grading made the most of the sunshine.  The concept, writing, casting, filming, editing, grading, soundtrack, clearance and delivery were all managed by JMS.  For your next holiday why not try comparing insurance at www.medicaltravelcompared.co.uk.

For more TV and Video work check out our website www.jms-group.com or call us on 01603 811855 for a chat about your project.

Professional recruitment specialists Pure has celebrated the milestone of supporting over 20,000 candidates across the East of England to find their next career role.

The placement of Helen Turner, who has started her new role as Head of Group Reporting at Cambridge University, marked the 20,000th role successfully filled by Pure and we are delighted to have assisted so many people to secure their next step on the professional career ladder.

Pure, which has offices in Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich and Chelmsford, was originally founded in 2002 with the key aim of supporting the region’s businesses at the same time as helping candidates at every step of their career. Today it specialises in Accountancy, Financial Services, IT, Human Resources, Marketing and Office Support recruitment solutions at all levels, including board level appointments through its specialist Executive division.

David Culley, Associate Director at Pure, visited Helen in her new place of work to present her a hamper filled with special treats to celebrate the milestone.

He said: “To have supported 20,000 people to find their next career step, and to have worked in partnership with organisations across the region to find these high-calibre candidates, is a fantastic achievement. Pure is committed to contributing to the growth of our region, as well as making a difference to people’s lives, and this milestone shows just one of the ways in which we achieve this. We wish Helen all the best in her new role and look forward to continuing to support thousands more local people and organisations by providing high quality recruitment and advice.”

Pure has supported Cambridge University with its recruitment needs for more than 10 years and has placed over 30 candidates in positions across the university and its colleges, ranging from HR through to accountancy and financial services roles.

Steve Hutson, Assistant Director of Finance at Cambridge University, said: “We have had a very productive relationship with Pure for a number of years. The main contributor to this is they have taken the time to understand our culture and only put forward candidates with the right profile. Congratulations on reaching such a milestone, we look forward to a continuing fruitful partnership.”

As well as having successfully supported 20,000 professional job seekers since it was founded, Pure has also raised over £129,000 for local charities and it has created several initiatives to help businesses to continue attracting and retaining the best people. These include the Best Employers Eastern Region initiative which celebrates the region’s best employers and assists organisations to create inspiring, innovative and engaging places to work.

In close collaboration with the design and development teams at Vaccoda Design, we are glad to announce that we are working on Radiant Kitchen’s website. Radiant Kitchens are a North London kitchen showroom and experts in fitting a wide range of kitchens and relevant installations, based in Enfield. Mixing high quality kitchens and excellent customer service, they have built up a loyal and admirable customer base across not just North London, but Greater London as a whole.

We were approached by Radiant Kitchens as they were not seeing much online exposure and therefore business. they have a WordPress supported website that looks and feels sleek and easy. However, they found themselves increasingly on the fringes of the kitchen industry. A very competitive area, Radiant Kitchens’ approach has been to look at the targeting of local searches and pushing specific products that they offer.

An advantage that the team at Radiant Kitchens have is that unlike many other companies with websites, theirs is not in a dire position and rather than having previously undertaken black-hat Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), negatively impacting their online presence, they have simply not ever undergone any significant SEO work until working with us.

What we Have Done So Far

Since starting a few months ago with Radiant Kitchens and the teams at Vaccoda Design we have implemented and upgraded a number of SEO aspects that needed attention. This has included optimising their meta titles, meta descriptions and alt-texts. Having had their meta data cleaned up for the benefit of search engines, Radiant Kitchens’ website is easier for Google and others to crawl [read] and rank. Furthermore, as a website with a large visual element to what they do; selling and showcasing kitchens and related products Google Image Search is crucial to what they do. By optimising and updating all of their website’s alt-text tags, their visual elements are now available on Google Image results.

We have also undertaken a link strategy of two elements. Initially, we removed all spammy links from their backlink profile to ensure all referring links are clean and Google and SEO-friendly. This has included removing them from several spammy directories and link-farms. By cleaning up their backlink profile, the site is afforded a higher level of credibility and is deemed as ‘genuine’ and ‘reliable,’ having only undertaken white hat, clean SEO.

We have also embarked on a structured content strategy. This includes ensuring their main services and products, such as Siemens Kitchen Appliances have their own dedicated pages of content-rich information and SEO-friendly practices. Furthermore, additional services and supplementary products for kitchens such as hot taps and others are important. This has entailed extensive keyword research to understand user data and keyword volumes to inform our overall targeting.

The Results

Radiant Kitchens are still in the early stages of their SEO campaign and much of the ‘big’ results are yet to manifest as Google crawls and re-ranks the site accordingly. However, Radiant Kitchens have already found themselves pushed up to the first position on Google for ‘Kitchens in Enfield,’ allowing them to capture their local area.

We look forward to continuing the work with radiant Kitchens together with the teams at Vaccoda Design.

The TaxAssist Direct Group, based in Norwich, and which runs the largest network of accountants specialising in providing services to small businesses, has announced that it will be strengthening its Board of Directors when Daren Moore FCCA joins its Executive Board of Directors in April 2018.

Daren has spent his whole career in the accounting arena, having worked his way up from accounts trainee to a member of the Management Board of Price Bailey LLP, where he has an outstanding track record of achievement.

“I have worked alongside The TaxAssist Direct Group and its TaxAssist Accountants network for many years and am delighted to have the opportunity to join their Executive Board,” said Daren. “At a time of unprecedented change in our industry, I believe the TaxAssist Accountants network is ideally placed to benefit, utilising its unique position in the market and what I see as its key strengths – its vast number of local offices and shops around the UK and overseas (Ireland and Australia with plans for Canada and USA in the near future), people, relationships and brand. I’m looking forward to being part of the team and contributing to its ongoing growth and success.”

Karl Sandall, Group Chief Executive Director of The TaxAssist Direct Group, said: “As part of our strategic succession planning, we had a wish list of individuals to join the Board. We needed an individual who would suit the business of being a franchisor, combined with a solid knowledge of the accounting and taxation industry, as well as being immediately respected for their ability to communicate and be trusted.  Daren Moore was at the top of that wish list. 

“To secure an individual of Daren’s calibre and experience, is a huge coup for The TaxAssist Direct Group of companies and bodes well for the future direction and development of our fast expanding business both in the UK and Internationally.”

June 2017

Freebridge Chief Executive wins Inspirational Leader of the Year at national awards.

Freebridge Community Housing are delighted to announce that their Chief Executive, Tony Hall, has won in the Inspirational Leader of the Year category at the Housing Heroes Awards.

The awards ceremony was held on 26 June, during the opening ceremony of the Housing 2017 conference in Manchester, Europe’s largest housing event.

The nomination focused on the opportunities and support Tony has provided across the business, cultivating an open and inclusive atmosphere within Freebridge. Supporting statements from a number of employees, attesting to Tony’s inspirational leadership, were included in the nomination.

Tony has spent almost 30 years working at a senior level in social housing and local governments all over the country.

Prior to his appointment as Chief Executive at Freebridge Community Housing, Tony had been a Corporate Director with the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, and lead on the voluntary transfer of the housing stock over to Freebridge in 2006.

Freebridge Chief Executive, Tony Hall, said: “It came as a massive surprise when I found out that my colleagues had nominated me for this award, but to actually win is incredible.

“I am lucky to be in a job that I really enjoy and receiving this award is possibly on of the biggest honours I could have.”

Tudor Lodge’s SEO team are proud to announce that we are now working with Secure Site on their website (https://www.securesiteuk.co.uk/). Secure site provides a host of services for vacant properties and those that fall to squatters. Amongst their services they offer squatter eviction, waste removal, hazardous waste clearance services and many other related services such as security fencing and hoarding.

We were approached by the new development team at Secure Site who have in the past worked with a variety of parties to try and improve the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) status of the site and increase their Google rankings. However, they had yet to see any real results manifest as a result of any previous SEO work. We have now taken over the project and are facing their online challenges including:

·       Updating their content management system (CMS) for SEO to allow the site to be crawled efficiently

·       Removing old and outdated practices from their website such as meta keywords and duplicate meta data sets

·       Ensuring the company is viewed by Google as being a company rather than an old-fashioned blog

·       Ensuring that only the cleanest link building is undertaken

We are also in close communication with their development team, working on the overall build and user experience of the website as well as various crucial SEO ranking factors.

What We Have Done

Working with the team at Secure Site and their development team we have already implemented many updates and improvements which are starting to have the desired, positive effects. We have removed old practices and are working on updating the site to a much more modern and SEO-friendly state. This has included adding a new XML sitemap for Google to read, adding unique meta titles and descriptions for each page, securing the site with an SSL certificate (https) and working through their crawl errors to ensure a seamless user experience.

Secure Sie have already seen their site achieve top 5 positions for a number of key and competitive terms as a result of the progress made thus far and we expect results to only continue to improve over the coming weeks and months as a result of the work we are carrying out and will be doing.

We will be working on their site content, link profile, site speed and mobile user experience and we look forward to continuing our budding relationship with all of the team at Secure Site. 

All of the team at Tudor Lodge Consultants are thrilled to be working on an exciting Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content and online project with luxury car and transfer providers, Real Transfers, who have for a number of years provided luxury car services to a whole host of people from celebrities, to everyday people. They specialise in getting their clients from A to B in comfort and style, providing high levels of service and stylish and efficient service.

The Challenges

Currently, Real Transfers have a fully functioning, bookable website that allows users to seamlessly enquire and then book a car from almost anywhere to anywhere. Real Transfers have a large number of clients who use their services to go to and from London airports such as Heathrow, Luton, Gatwick, London City Airport and Stanstead as well as various ports such as Portsmouth and Southampton.

Real Transfers came to us with the desire to greatly increase enquiries and bookings via their online platform. Currently, they rank well for several key terms relating strongly to their services. However, they are determined to increase the volume of enquiries and bookings, whilst ensuring they keep a high level of users across their website.

In addition, they wish to become a real resource in the luxury car transfer market and as such have been researching a great deal of useful information to turn into content. One of the challenges with the site is because it is a very large website (over 300 pages deep), there is a lot of content and data to work with in a way that is simply not the case with so many other websites. In addition, heir site is built in SQL, with some developers shying away.

The Work We Are Doing

Working with Tudor Lodge’s SEO, content and development teams, Real Transfers are undertaking a full SEO and online progression strategy. We began the process with detailed consultations with the client which then led us onto carrying out their keyword research. This allowed us to identify key industry areas that Real Transfers can make ground on and other areas for them to break into.

Having completed the keyword research, we have set up an extensive tracking platform for them and will be keeping track of the progress as it happens.

Updating the SEO practices of their site is key, with link disavows of spammy sites and directories having been applied and meta keywords removed, to better allow search engines to crawl and understand their website, content and offerings. This will also be helped by the new sitemap we will work with the Real Transfers team to provide to Google. We are also well underway with their link building strategy to establish Real Transfers as a strong website and brand in their area. Moving forward we are to be working on optimising their meta data, improving their site speed and optimising their user experiences and content offerings for both mobile and desktop to ensure they drawl in the right users and keep them engaged as required for business.

We are looking forward to continuing our work with Real Transfers and are excited about the online successes that the future will bring.

Will you be attending the Royal Norfolk Show this year?

Visit our stand in the Buy Local Norfolk marquee for a chance to win £200 to spend on blinds, curtains or shutters.

The marquee is on Avenue 9, stand 279.

Fiona and Julie will be there on both Wednesday and Thursday.

There will be lots of other local businesses exhibiting in the marquee, so it’s a great chance to meet local firms, or even join us for the Pimms and Pizza After-Show Party on Wednesday.

Here is the booking form for the evening party: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buy-local-norfolk-after-hours-at-the-royal-norfolk-show-2017-registration-31674894462

The Norfolk Show itself looks to be amazing as usual. There is so much to see, including the only performance outside of London this year by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery.

Last call for spaces on our Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety Refresher course taking place on 5th July at No.8 Thorpe Road in Norwich.

Aim; To refresh and update your knowledge of food safety procedures and how to manage staff

Objectives;

*Ability to implement and supervise a food safety management system

*Understand food safety procedures

*Understand the concept of food hazards and the risks associated with them

*Understand the terminology with respect to supervising food safety

*Understand the techniques involved in controlling and monitoring food safety

*Appreciate the risks linked to cross contamination

*Understand the role temperature has to play in the control of food safety

*Appreciate the importance of supervising high standards of cleanliness in food premises

Organisation

Duration; 1 day programme

Exam/Assessment; Multiple choice examination, accredited by Ofqual

Cost; £157.00 + VAT includes, notes, refreshments, lunch, the assessment & certification fees

Awarding Body; Chartered Institute for Environment Health (CIEH)

Tutor; Sarah Daniels

Differentiation;  The CIEH Level 3 Award in Food Safety taken within the last three years.

Audience; Managers and supervisors in small, medium or large catering, manufacturing or retail businesses

For more information please email mitchell@Redcat.gb.com

Dragon Security Systems is leading the region in the installation of 360-degree fast response cameras in libraries and other public buildings and has already showcased the product to supermarkets, food manufacturers, local authorities, schools and other potential clients. 

The unique package combines all-round camera technology with associated ‘de-warping software’ which transforms the images from the fisheye lens perspective into a flat image that the human eye can relate to on monitor screens.

Central to the security package delivered by the Wroxham-based company is its ability to offer all-round visibility from a single central camera rather than having a CCTV system that relies on multiple fixed cameras.

Dragon Security Systems managing Director Richard Lawrie explained: “The key benefit is that the 360 camera reduces the numbers of cameras required on a site.

 “The central camera performs the role that four or five fixed cameras currently carry out and as well as clear cost benefits it also virtually eliminates blind spots.”

Dragon recently demonstrated the system at its Wroxham base to a specially-invited audience drawn from a range of key sectors including supermarkets, department stores, MoD suppliers, food manufacturers, academy and private schools, count council city council town council, bus company, police, property developer and a football club.

Teaming up with Roys (Wroxham) Ltd department store, it showcased the technology and beamed back images from the store premises to its main offices.

“The demonstration not only showed the capabilities of the camera and system but also the remote monitoring capability to an audience that was in a separate location at our offices,” said Mr Lawrie.

The system can constantly record, or be set to record motion-only when triggered by movement, but also has the capability for the operator to focus in on a specific area and enhance the detail to view any incident or event at any given time.

“This is crucial from a health and safety perspective as well as a security position and is important in the evidence-gathering process,” he added.

Typical examples of its capabilities include helping to provide evidence if, for example a supermarket faces a claim for damages following an incident, or it can help prevent or track theft, and identify intruders. In petrol stations, it can help with drive-off offences or other forecourt incidents and accidents.

Another example is in the food manufacturing sector; if batch becomes contaminated, the camera can help isolate a suspected conveyor line and time when the contamination may have occurred.

The images can be monitored live or on a recording and with its remote monitoring capability, images can be viewed from anywhere in the world via laptop or mobile phone.

A store or premises that have several branches, for example, with a camera system in each branch will only need one central monitoring facility, reducing the need for manpower. There is also the option for split screens to view different branches at the same time.

The 360 camera constantly records the whole 360 panorama and continues to record even when footage is being monitored from a specific area, explained Dragon’s sales director John Ketteridge.

“One big advantage,” he added, “is that when a store, supermarket, library or other premises changes its layout, sometimes the fixed corner cameras will have the view amended or blocked.

“The central 360 camera, however, does not have this problem, which means that a room can be changed without affecting the monitoring position and the surveillance results.”

However, the over-riding benefit is in terms of cost with one central camera performing the role of several. A typical four-camera fixed installation will cost £5,575 whereas a single 360 degree fisheye lens system is £4,485, a saving of about 20 per cent, or almost £1100.

There are also reduced installation costs for the new cameras, which can also still be implemented in a CCTV system using a mix of camera types.

Mr Lawrie said the camera delivers a comprehensive security and safeguarding element, whether for staff, customers, products or production processes and health & safety protection.

“The combination of cameras and software working together are exceptional and the review, monitoring and analytic capabilities and options are of the highest quality,” he added.

Potential customers can contact Dragon Security Systems for a free survey for the highly-versatile and flexible system.

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Eye Film’s latest documentary will be broadcast on Friday 23rd June at 7.30pm on BBC1 (East). Tune in to see Dr Aarathi Prasad exploring water-related inventions from the East of England.  Whether it’s new ways to cross the sea, making filthy water drinkable or by designing lifesaving apparatus, inventors from our region have been busy making waves. See our ‘behind the scenes’ blog & photos at https://www.eyefilm.co.uk/making-waves/