Member News

We were delighted to have John Beer of the Centre for Advanced Knowledge Engineering speak at the fourth Norfolk Developers breakfast at the Maids Head in Norwich.

I’ve heard a lot in the last week about how the problem with getting young people leaving school in Norfolk into jobs is a lack of aspiration. I’ll go into some of the reasons I’ve heard this is the case in another post. What’s interesting is what’s being done about it in West Norfolk.

The Centre for Advanced Knowledge Engineering is a £350M development being built on the old Burnham Market RAF base. The intention is to attract Artificial Intelligence and other high tech firms to the region. As well as office space, the site will include a conference centre, incubator space and a new site for a local academy allowing it to double in size to 1500 students in anticipation of the growth expect in the region as a result of building the centre. Local infrastructure improvements, including an upgrade to Ely station, and 600MB broadband are also planned as part of the development.

John Beer is clearly passionate about making a difference and I believe that the Centre for Advanced Knowledge Engineering will do just that. I also think it will even out the distribution of tech jobs and firms in Norfolk. At the moment, as you would expect, it’s very Norwich centric.

John told us about the plans for the centre, the history of the project, the companies involved and his personal story along the way. It was fascinating and would have easily made a much longer session.

The Norfolk Developers breakfasts are held quarterly with the intention of exposing people with a more general interest in tech to the group. They take place in the Oak Room of the Maids Head in Norwich which comfortably holds 20 people and the excellent breakfast is from the buffet.

Words: Paul Grenyer

JMS Group has been listed in Campaign Magazine’s Top 30 Regional Agencies.

Campaign is aleading magazine in the advertising industry that often features work from the biggest London brands and agencies. Every year,they publish a ‘School Report’ that ranks agencies according to billings,based on datafrom Nielson.

2016 is the first time that JMS has been featuredin the published list and is the only company based inEast Anglia, with the exception of creative production houseFall Off The Wallin Hertfordshire. It can often be challenging for a rural media company to compete with others from large media hubs, such as London, Manchester and Birmingham, but 2015 was a busy year for JMS that involvedworking with big names in cruising, toysand services.

The company is thrilled to berecognised amongst the top players in the industry and looks forward to helping more brands grow this year through TV advertising, which continues to be the most effective advertising medium and is constantly evolving to become more targeted and more accessible for smaller brands.

If you would like to know more about TV or radio advertising, visit the JMS Group website or call 01603 811855.

David Paulson, Senior Manager for UK and International Recruitment, and James Mattam, Senior Business Development Manager at TaxAssist Accountants, are back from a successful trip to Australia, where they delivered training, looked for future shop sites and attended the Sydney Franchising and Business Opportunities Expo with TaxAssist Master franchisees Terry Murphy and Celeste Godwin.

Terry and Celeste are business partners who have been running their own practices across New South Wales and Queensland for over 10 years and are TaxAssist’s first Australian Master Franchisees. They have so far rebranded three of their existing premises in Forster, Woolgoolga and Taree into TaxAssist offices, and have taken on their first franchisee, Avendra Narayan, who has opened a shop in the Liverpool district of Sydney, New South Wales.

David comments, “Terry and Celeste have done a fantastic job so far in promoting the TaxAssist brand in Australia. Myself and James have enjoyed seeing how far things have come already, and offering advice and guidance on further development. The potential for both master franchisees and franchisees is huge in Australia, which has a buoyant small business market which is largely untapped. The franchise exhibition, at which we had a stand, was very well attended and we were inundated with enquiries, so we are hopeful that we should see more franchisees joining us soon.”

To learn more about TaxAssist Accountants in Australia please visit www.taxassistfranchise.com.au

TaxAssist has been operating successfully in the UK for over 20 years and has over 280 practices in the UK and over 20 in the Republic of Ireland.

Avendra Narayan CPA has become the first Australian TaxAssist Accountants franchisee. Avendra, who has over 45 years’ experience in accounting, business and finance has opened a shop in the Liverpool district of Sydney, New South Wales.

Joining Australia’s newest network of accountants, and becoming its first franchisee held no fear for Avendra, who was attracted to the shop concept and business development initiatives offered by TaxAssist. “Many people will ask what makes TaxAssist so different?” said Avendra. “Really, it boils down to offering a more comprehensive, all round service, specifically for small businesses – if you like – a ‘one-stop-shop’.”

All TaxAssist shops are based in accessible, convenient locations. Avendra continues “The look and feel of the shops are completely different from traditional accounting practices. We know clients will appreciate our open, welcoming look and we want clients to enjoy coming through the door. Gone are the days of feeling inhibited by a trip to your accountant. The shop certainly seems to be working too, in the first two weeks of opening, I signed 14 clients, the majority of which were walk-in clients!”

The Liverpool shop joins the Forster, Woolgoolga and Taree branches, which opened in January and are operated by Master Franchisees Terry Murphy and Celeste Godwin.

TaxAssist is looking to grow its network by joining forces with other accountants. If you are interested in finding out more, please visit the Australian franchisee recruitment website www.taxassistfranchise.com.au.

TaxAssist has over 280 practices in the UK and over 20 in the Republic of Ireland.

M+A Partners wasproud to recently host it’sfirst annual Owner Managed Business survey breakfast at Norwich University of the Arts’ Ideas Factory.

Those attending were told about some of the key issues that are at the forefront of the minds of Owner managed Businesses, both locally and nationally.

Please click here to download your copy of the Survey. If you would like a hard copy sent to you, please contact Ryan Nesbitt on 01603 227600 or ryan.nesbitt@mapartners.co.uk

A team from Pure Resourcing Solutions (Pure) has raised over £1,000 for the East Anglian Air Ambulance by tackling the Only the Brave charity obstacle race on Sunday (20th March).

The runners from the recruitment agency’s Norwich, Ipswich and Cambridge offices looked anything but pure by the time they had completed the tough, muddy course, but they all confirmed it was worth it to have raised £1,100 for such a fantastic cause. There are also still more donations coming in for the team.

The Pure runners took part in two teams, with one completing the 5-mile Intrepid course and the other team taking part in the 10-mile Fearless course, both of which were held at Elveden, near Thetford. Both teams faced a range of different obstacles throughout, including having to scale 7ft walls, landing in a pool of mud on the other side.

Becky Wilson, Managing Consultant for HR recruitment at the Norwich office, was the captain of the team taking on the Intrepid, five-mile race. She said: “I recently visited the air ambulance and heard the team talk first-hand about their experiences, and how the service is completely reliant on fundraising, which really makes you think. We go about our day-to-day lives, but everything pales into insignificance compared to what they have to deal with every day. The money we have raised will help to make all the difference. It was definitely worth getting exceptionally wet and muddy for a couple of hours and it was also a great team bonding experience!”

The East Anglian Air Ambulance has cited the charity’s pilots, doctors, patients and families as the inspiration behind organising this fundraising event. The air ambulance flies 365 days a year, taking highly skilled medical teams to people who have been unfortunate enough to be involved in accidents or medical emergencies in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. The crews need to be brave, and overcome physical and emotional obstacles every single day. Sponsorship from the event will help to keep the East Anglian Air Ambulance in the sky, as the charity needs to raise £10.2m this year to keep flying.

Several members of the team taking part, including Directors Ian Walters and Lynn Walters, were from Pure’s Ipswich office. The East Anglian Air Ambulance has been included as one of the charities for the #IpswichBig10 campaign, where team members have pledged to take part in, or organise, events to raise money for 10 local charities to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Ipswich office.

A Norfolk firm which specialises in finding and structuring funding to help local business prosper and grow has been recognised with a prestigious national award.

B2B Cashflow Solutions, which has been a finalist in the Business Moneyfacts Awards for the past four years (‘Highly Commended’ last year and ‘Commended’ in 2014), this year became national winner in the category ‘Best Asset Based Finance Broker’ against stiff competition from eight other finalists across the UK at the Lancaster Hotel in London on 17th March.

Launched in 2006 by directors Ian Hart, Nick Flower and Simon Reynolds, who between them have nearly 90 years commercial finance and business banking experience, B2B Cashflow Solutions is an independent commercial finance brokerage and consultancy, based in Framingham Pigot, which has developed a range of products and services to accommodate the whole-life finance cycle needs to support the growth aspirations for local businesses.

Since becoming one of the first commercial finance brokers in the UK to be authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in March 2015, the firm has invested heavily in its infrastructure to underpin a 47% growth in its team of financial professionals throughout East Anglia and across the UK.

This geographical expansion has been complemented by further diversification of skills within the team. An accountant, a real estate consultant, and a business coach are among the seven highly experienced professionals B2B Cashflow Solutions has successfully attracted so far this year from financial organisations, and banks including HSBC and Barclays.

Simon Reynolds commented ‘Our aim has always been to develop a brand which local businesses could trust and identify with to find and structure funding which helps them prosper.

We believe our Business Moneyfacts Award represents recognition nationally that a Norfolk firm is leading the way in helping other local and UK businesses to achieve their own growth aspirations’.

Specialising in finding cash for businesses, and restructuring existing funding for companies to reduce debt burden and improve cash flow, B2B Cashflow Solutions aims to deliver these solutions, often where traditional mainstream funders have failed, through a diversity of alternative markets, and works closely to support its banks relationships and other professional partners.

Examples of success in helping local businesses range from delivering funding within a £2.6 million project to build an anaerobic digestion plant for Muntons Plc’s maltings facility in Stowmarket, to sourcing the investment which facilitated the management buy-in of Quinto Crane and Plant Ltd, a leading crane hire company based in Norwich.

Products include asset finance, fundraising against existing working assets, invoice finance, unsecured business loans, commercial mortgages, grant funding, and research and development relief. The company has also developed its own financial health checks to help business owners reduce debt and improve cash flow.

Pure Resourcing Solutions (Pure) are pleased to congratulate Cambscuisine, winners of the Pure-sponsored “Employer of the Year” category at theCambridge News Business Excellence Awardsheld last night (17 March) at King’s College, Cambridge.

With many of the region’s leading businesses in attendance, the award celebrates an organisation that successfully inspires, motivates, develops and rewards its staff.

Cambscuisine was one of three companies shortlisted for the category and they were successful due to their culture; genuinely placing “people at the heart of the business”. Cambscuisine has 130 people working across six restaurants: St John’s Chop House, Smokeworks, The Cock Hemingford Grey, The Tickell Arms, The Cambridge Chop House and The Crown & Punchbowl and prides itself with having high staff retention in a sector where staff turnover is typically high.

With a number of innovative people development approaches -instead of having a head office and a traditional board, the Directors stay connected by working from their restaurants “surrounded by their team”. The Board is replaced with a team of “challengers” selected from across the business to provide feedback and ideas that has helped to nurture a strong family culture. Their aim is to help staff realise their full potential and many of their General Managers have started in roles such as dish washing and waiting, progressing through the business supported by a personalised development plan.

Lynn Walters, Director at Pure and awards judge, says: “We were proud to sponsor the category for the fourth year – it’s a huge privilege to watch Cambridge’s businesses thrive.”

“This year we met 3 diverse and amazing businesses who all have inspired teams of passionate people who are proud of their organisation and deliver a great customer experience. When a company gets it right, you can almost tangibly feel the culture that permeates throughout the business and Cambscuisine clearly showed a genuine passion for people development which shone through in the presentation. Congratulations to Oliver and his team.”

Lynn is well qualified in judging the best employer categories with a track record of developing employee engagement strategies and supporting talent management with Pure’s clients. In addition to core recruitment services, Lynn runs the highly successful Best Employers Eastern Region initiative – a biennial online survey, in partnership with eras Ltd, a provider of psychometric and talent solutions. The survey is open between April and September 2016 culminating in awards being presented at employee engagement seminars in October 2016, bringing together senior business leaders from the region Congratulations are also extended to the shortlisted companies Newmarket Racecourse and Genie Ventures for their commitment to their exceptionally engaged employees.

To find out more about the Cambridge News Business Awards or the Best Employers Eastern Region initiative, contact Lynn Walters on: 01223 209888 orlynn.walters@prs.uk.com.

I’ve been using JavaScript reluctantly on and off for years. I’m currently working on a project that is highly dependant on JQuery based, handwritten JavaScript. Just as Rupert described in this workshop, I am one of the world’s copy-and-paste JavaScripters, so I thought it was about time I looked at it more closely to see what I was missing. I recently took on an apprentice who also needed to learn JavaScript, so a Norfolk Developers workshop was ideal for us.

We all know there’s a software development skills shortage nationally and very much so locally and this is something Norfolk Developers is trying to do something about by introducing a series of introductory workshops aimed at those with little or no experience. Initially Norfolk Developers will be concentrating on web development skills such as HTML & CSS, JavaScript and JQuery. There are also plans for introductory workshops for iOS and Android mobile development. The group will also continue to cater for the more experienced developers with their regular series of intermediate and advanced workshops.

We all know JavaScript is evil, right? Yes, but it’s a necessary evil and there are reasons it’s evil. This was very well explained by Rupert Redington at Norfolk Developers’ JavaScript Starter Kit, beginners full day workshop. It was created in two weeks and suffered a little because of that, but we are where we are.

What was really great about the workshop for me was that I was able to learn and understand the details of the language I had missed before, such as the different ways things are compared for equality in the language.

After an interesting and in depth introduction to the language Rupert introduced us to NodeSchool, which is a series of tasks designed to help you learn and write JavaScript one step at a time in a rewarding way. You write the code to solve a problem, run the test and it tells you whether you have it right or not. I could have done that for hours!

In the afternoon we brought together a lot of what we had learnt in the morning to write a simple one page web application which used our browser’s API (Application Programming Interface) to find our current location and an external API to look up where the nearest public toilets were to us. It was fantastic to see what we’d learnt solving a real world problem.

Rupert will be back in the summer running an updated beginners JavaScript workshop.

Words: Paul Grenyer

Blue Sky Professional Development held their annual Student Graduation this week at the Assembly House, which coincided with their 3rd birthday. Students, their families, tutors and guests joined Kate Woods and Beth Russell, Directors of Blue Sky, for a celebratory evening of drinks, superb canapes and the presentation ceremony. They were joined by Steve Way, HR Manager with Aquaterra Energy Limited who gave a very interesting speech on the transferable HR skills required in a range of Industries and what Steve saw as the future issues facing HR. Also giving a brief talk on the Chartered institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) was Tony Chapman, Centre Development Liaison with the Institute. This year was another successful year for Blue Sky’s students with all 3 levels of CIPD qualifications being achieved, as well as, for the first time, the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management.

Blue Sky Professional Development delivers ILM qualifications in Leadership and Management at levels 3 and 5, and CIPD Qualifications in Human Resources and Learning and Development at levels 3. 5 and 7 to students from across East Anglia from their offices in Norwich, and training venues in Colchester.

www.blueskypd.co.uk

Realise Futures Careers Solutions

£13,900 pro rata

Norwich, Norfolk

Part-time – 22.2hrs (subject to change)

Permanent

A vacancy exists for the role of Business Support Administrator for Realise Futures Careers Solutions. The prime purpose of this role will be to offer administrative assistance to the RFCS team. You will need to ensure that tasks are completed within a timely manner and to the levels of RFCS and the challenging demands on the National Careers Service contract.

This is a varied and complex role that requires excellent communication skills and the ability to liaise with peers and senior managers.

For more information or to apply please contact samantha.austin@realisefutures.org or 01473 238601.

Closing date: Monday 4th April

Interview date: W/c Monday 11th April

Two teams from Pure Resourcing Solutions (Pure) are set to get extremely wet and muddy this Sunday (20 March) as they tackle ‘Only the Brave’, an extreme obstacle course race in aid of the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

Eighteen runners from Pure’s Norwich, Ipswich and Cambridge offices will be racing across a vast area of land, usually used for farming and military training, at Elveden, near Thetford. But this isn’t an ordinary charity fun run as the teams will face at least 20 different obstacles throughout the course, including having to scale 7ft walls, landing in a pool of mud on the other side.

Becky Wilson, Managing Consultant HR recruitment at the Norwich office, is the captain of the team taking on the Intrepid, five-mile race and Scott Woodrow, Associate Director at the Ipswich office, is the captain of the team facing the Fearless, ten-mile race.

Pure wanted to support the event as the East Anglian Air Ambulance is a client of the professional recruitment agency, although Becky admits they are also wondering if they must be a bit mad to have willingly agreed to take part.

Becky said: “We’re trying not to think about it too much in case we change our minds! But even if we do get exceptionally wet, cold and muddy for a couple of hours, it will be worth it to have been able to raise money for such a fantastic cause.”

The East Anglian Air Ambulance has cited the charity’s pilots, doctors, patients and families as the inspiration behind organising this fundraising event. The air ambulance flies 365 days a year, taking highly skilled medical teams to people who have been unfortunate enough to be involved in accidents or medical emergencies in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. The crews need to be brave, and overcome physical and emotional obstacles every single day.

Becky added: “I recently visited the air ambulance and heard the team talk first-hand about their experiences, and how the service is completely reliant on fundraising, really makes you think. We go about our day-to-day lives, but everything pales into insignificance compared to what they have to deal with every day. The money we raise will help to make all the difference.”

Sponsorship from the event will help to keep the East Anglian Air Ambulance in the sky, as the charity needs to raise £10.2m this year to keep flying. To date the Pure team has already raised over £700 and are aiming to reach at least £900.

Led by Directors, Ian Walters and Lynn Walters, several members of the team are from the Ipswich office. This latest fundraising mission will also be part of the #IpswichBig10 anniversary campaign. Team members at the Ipswich team have pledged to take part in, or organise, ten different events to raise money for local charities to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Ipswich office.

To sponsor the Only the Brave Pure team, visit https://www.justgiving.com/Team-PRS

-Ends-

For more media information please contact Dawn Humphreys or Amy Larman at FOUR agency on 01603 627294 or email dawn@fouragency.co.uk or amy@fouragency.uk

Notes to editors:

About Pure Resourcing Solutions

Formed in 2002 from a single office in Cambridge, Pure Resourcing Solutions are now the professional recruitment specialists in the East of England; with offices in Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich and Chelmsford.

Pure 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.

www.prs.uk.com