Member News

A Watton-based family company has pledged to raise £25,000 over the next three years for the nook appeal to helpbuild a new children’s hospice in the heart of Norfolk.

The Abel Group, which includes house builder Abel Homes and renewable energy company Abel Energy, has signed up to be part of the charity’s nook business network.

The firm has already donated £10,000 and has pledged a further £15,000 to the appeal by devising fundraising initiatives and ways to promote the appeal to their community, clients, suppliers and customers.

Managing Director Tony Abel who attended the charity’s launch event at the Norfolk Showground in the presence of EACH Royal Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, said: “The new hospice will enable EACH to do so much more for local young people with life-threatening illnesses – and support for their families. It is such a worthy, local cause and we are delighted to throw our support behind it.”

Gary Cook, the nook appeal corporate fundraiser, said: “We won’t be able to realise our vision of a new purpose-built children’s hospice for Norfolk without the support of the whole Norfolk community – individuals, schools, community groups and of course businesses, so it’s great that this family owned company wants to work with us to help other families within that community who need our support.

“EACH exists to care for local life-threatened children and young people and support their families and with the support of the fantastic Norfolk community we can help this process with the realisation of the nook.”

Anyone who is interested in finding out more about the appeal or the nook business network should contact the Norfolk Fundraising Team on 01953 666767 or funding@each.org.uk or for more information on the Abel Group please visit www.abelhomes.co.uk or www.abelenergy.co.uk

We are extremely pleased to announce that we have renewed our sponsorship of the Norfolk Food and Drink awards 2015. The event, which promotes the fantastic work put in by our local food and drink manufacturers and retailers, will be held on Monday, 14th September at the Norfolk Showground.

As specialists in the hospitality, agricultural and manufacturing industries, we have many clients operating within the food and drink sectors, ranging from: pubs, restaurants, café’s, bars, farm shops and breweries. We felt that sponsorship of the awards was a fantastic way for us to show our support for both our clients and all those who are involved locally in the industry.

The nominations for the awards are now open and those wishing to enter have until Friday 3rd July to submit your entries. You can read more about the awards and the eligibility criteria here:https://www.norfolkfada.co.uk/

www.astonshaw.co.uk

Norfolk financial planning firm Loveday & Partners, based at Broadland Business Park in Norwich, are the latest company to support East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) by signing up to become a member of the nook business network.

The nook business network asks for companies small, medium and large throughout Norfolk to commit to raising a significant amount of money over the term of the appeal in return for a number of benefits and support the charity will provide.

The corporate scheme for the local business community will help EACH to raise the funds required to realise its vision for the nook appeal of a new children’s hospice in the heart of Norfolk.

Loveday & Partners Director, Mark Loveday who attended the launch event of the nook appeal at the Norfolk Showground in the presence of EACH Royal Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge was quick to pledge the company’s support to not only raise funds for the appeal but to also raise awareness of the appeal to others and encourage their support.

Mark Loveday, Director, Loveday & Partners, said: “The support offered by EACH to families during incredibly difficult times is absolutely incredible and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to help create a purpose built facility to enable EACH to continue its work in our community for generations to come.”

Gary Cook, the nook appeal corporate fundraiser, said: “We’re delighted that Mark and the team at Loveday & Partners have decided to support us with the nook appeal and have signed up to the scheme we are running for local businesses.

“Mark made a point of speaking with me at the launch event to offer his support to our appeal. It’s great this has manifested itself in terms of the company supporting us by raising funds and spreading the word of the nook appeal, raising awareness and encouraging others to support this very worthwhile cause.

“To make this new children’s hospice in the heart of Norfolk a reality, and for it to really benefit Norfolk families at an unimaginably difficult time in their lives, we really do need the support of the whole Norfolk community – individuals, community groups, schools and of course the business community. The support from Loveday & Partners is extremely welcome and all at EACH look forward to working with Mark and the team moving forward.”

Anyone who is interested in finding out more about the appeal or the nook business network, should contact the Norfolk Fundraising Team on 01603 666767 or funding@each.org.uk and for more information on Loveday & Partners please visit www.lovedayandpartners.com

With over five and a half million lamp posts currently in operation across the UK, modern and old alike, ensuring their integrity and safety is paramount. Local councils and housing authorities can be all too aware of the expense of replacing corroded lamp posts and the complaints that come with public lighting being out of action. In addition, corroded lamp posts can cause accidents if they become unstable. The ability to locate defects early and easily can increase the chances of repair, hence saving tax-payer money and enables consistent working street lighting which can improve road safety within communities along with the further benefits of reducing crime and create a more pleasant environment, in turn promoting security and well-being.

Lighting columns are most susceptible to corrosion at and slightly below ground level; water, road salt, other chlorides and oxygen from the air combine to make it a highly corrosive area and in such a limited space, testing can be difficult and often results in excavation. In fact, difficulties in accessing steel tubing in restricted areas can be true of many industries, such as the pipework and risers through bulkheads and deck plates on board ships or in offshore installations for example. A system deployable from the ground level can enable detection of these hard to reach areas therefore reducing downtimes of equipment and staff alike.

Our rugged and compact ColcheK can do just that. Using the normal access door of a lamp post, the probe is able to scan the critical area and give an instant reading of the percentage loss of wall thickness directly on to the meter, from 5% loss to a depth of up to 1 meter underground in fact. With the Isle of Mann TT (IOMTT) motorcycle races looming, in May our client, Douglas Borough Council, knew that the lighting columns in and around the course needed to be investigated thoroughly to ensure the safety of everyone attending and our in-house manufactured units would be able to quickly give them the information they required. As TVC are sponsoring young racer James Cowton at the IOMTT this year, it seemed to be the perfect time to combine our working relationships with the exciting build up to the bike’s arrival and the start of the event, along with seeing the ColcheK in action.

After days of testing and safety procedures on the part of the council and the TT itself being set up, it was time for the action to begin and what an exciting IOMTT it was this year! From Michael Dunlop switching from Milwaukee Yamaha to BMW during practices to John McGuiness storming to victory in the TT Senior race and earning his 23rd TT win. Team Mugen dominated the Zero bike race with John McGuiness taking the team to victory but the elusive 120mph record remains – with 119mph registered this year, it’s likely we will see Team Mugen next year as they attempt to set the 120mph record.

Our sponsored rider, James Cowton, had a good TT overall. James had stepped in for Team PRB Racing, headed by racer Rob Barber and his father, as Rob suffered a significant collar bone injury in May this year. James qualified for and competed in the Superbike, Supersport (Race 1 & 2), Lightweight and Senior races. He finished in the top half of the table for each one, racking up speeds of up to 123mph and with an outstanding performance in the Lightweight race in which he finished in 4th place, we can guarantee that this is one youngster to watch in the future.

Swarm Apprenticeships and Orbit East are partnering to launch an exciting and unique new youth programme, giving almost 100 young people the chance to gain valuable training and employment opportunities.

Swarm Futures will be working with young people to build up their skills to ultimately provide opportunities through Enterprise Apprenticeships with local companies across Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich and Lowestoft. This initiative complements other programmes such as Norwich for Jobs.

Orbit East; part of Orbit Group which manages 38,000 homes nationally is estimated to have over 260 of Orbit’s young tenants at risk of not being in education, employment or training. This programme will provide the stepping stone for these people to move into fulfilling careers within the region.

Swarm Futures will involve training workshops and a post training support programme aimed at enhancing the younger generation’s employment, life and enterprise skills and helping them to identify relevant local opportunities. This will increase the chances of their applications being noticed and help them promote themselves well at interview.

Chris Perry, Managing Director of Swarm said, “We are really pleased to be able to work with Orbit East to create this innovative pre-employment support that combines our experience in recruiting apprentices for organisations across the region and our business and enterprise training to give young people a real chance to stand out from the crowd.” He goes on to say

“From my previous professional experience working at the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce, I have been able to work with hundreds of employers in regards to investing in young people. During this time it was generally agreed that when recruiting for new employees they might shortlist on the basis of qualifications, but it is attitude, enthusiasm and applicable commercial awareness that gets young people noticed and ultimately a job. This is where I believe this programme will excel, making sure that young people participating in the programme appear on shortlists, confident and ready for interview.”

Sam Scharf, Head of Community Investment said: “We are excited to be working with Swarm, who clearly understand both the needs and desires of young people and of local businesses across the East. This will provide unique opportunities for young people across our communities to work in really meaningful roles, developing enterprise skills in local businesses they probably already know”.

To find out more or come along to the open events then you can find details on our website www.swarmfutures.org.uk

Reedham rail station will receive extra care and attention from community volunteers, as two new station adopters join the existing team.

Local residents, Catherine Ford and Colin Brown, are joining Mike Stoker, Mike Warner and Ann Thompson to help out at Reedham, and, as well as tending the station garden and seeking sponsorship from local business, they have big plans to bring one of the disused station waiting rooms back into use to tell the story of the Norwich – Great Yarmouth line, the first railway in Norfolk.

The team plans to start restoring the old waiting room on the Great Yarmouth / Lowestoft bound platform, which was built in the late Victorian era, later this summer. The room will be painted in LNER heritage colours and will be used to display old photographs, information and memorabilia about the railway line.

In the meantime the newly expanded team will concentrate on keeping the station gardens and car park in pristine condition.

Adopter, Mike Warner, has landscaped the gardens, stocked the leaflet racks with information, kept the station clean and tidy and tended the flowers for the past eight years. He has been assisted by Mike Stoker, who has connections with the station since childhood, for the past four years.

Last year, the adopters installed three bright murals on the disused station buildings depicting scenes of coast and countryside, reflecting the diverse landscape that the line runs through.

The murals, along with flower tubs, landscaping of the station garden areas and the decorating of boarding to look like station windows, create the feeling of a thriving and well-kept station and a pleasant atmosphere for passengers as they wait for trains.

Mike Warner commented, “We are really grateful to everyone who has donated plants which has helped us to create our extensive station gardens. We have a lot of plans for the station and will continue to work with Abellio Greater Anglia to bring about further improvements in the future.”

Plants and hedging have been donated by Broadland District Council, the Humpty Dumpty Brewery, Pettits Animal Adventure Park and NENTA Train Tours.

Abellio Greater Anglia’s Area Customer Service Manager, James Reeve, said, “I’d like to welcome the new team members at Reedham. The station continues to go from strength to strength thanks to this huge community effort and we are very grateful for all their hard work and creative ideas that have transformed the station.”

The ‘Adopt a Station’ scheme started in 2003 and enables individuals or groups to adopt their local railway station and contribute to its presentation and welfare for the benefit of the local community.

The voluntary scheme was originally created to improve lines of communication between the train operator and station users however, over the years it has grown to become much more, with station adopters now playing an active role in keeping stations looking good through inventive gardening projects, creative community art projects, taking part in station ‘health checks’ or being the eyes and ears of their station.

Over the years, station adopters have also played a key role in raising money for new initiatives, such as improved waiting facilities or planting beautiful station gardens.

Abellio Greater Anglia now has over 183 adopters at over 90 stations across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

Steeles Lawis pleased toannounce a trio of staff promotions to Associate level.

Amy Taylor, a Solicitor specialising in wills and probate matters, joined the team in 2012, having qualified locally in 2008.

Gemma Hoskins, Marketing Manager at Steeles, who also leads on business development, similarly joined in 2012 and is the first non-lawyer to achieve the role of Associate.

Lindsey Crockett, a Commercial Solicitor, joined the firm in 2010 as a trainee, successfully working her way up the ranks to Associate level.

Stephen Drake, Managing Director at Steeles Law, commented: “At Steeles, we have always recognised the need to identify and develop talent within the firm. It is an essential tool in growing and evolving the business. Amy, Gemma and Lindsey have proven themselves to be committed members of staff, helping to inject fresh ideas and practices for the good of the wider team. We congratulate them and wish them continued success in their new roles”.

KLM UK Engineering & City College Norwich was please to be involved with Norfolk County Council’s recent National Apprenticeship Service Campaign. During May, NorfolkCounty Council were promoting Apprenticeships and you will have seen images on buses & washroom doors about Norwich & Norfolk.

The KLM UK Engineering / City College Norwich Apprentice Scheme was part of the ‘Earn whileyou Learn’ campaign and an ex-apprentice Jake Hishon was featured in the campaign as well as part of the Apprenticeships Norfolk website. Jake started his apprenticeship in 2010 after completing his GCSE’sand studied to become an aircraft engineer. Jake graduated last year and is now a fully fledged aircraft engineer based in our Norwich hangars.

First Buses visited KLM UK Engineering’ssite a long with Jerry White, Vice Principle City College NorwichjoiningJake and KLM UK Engineering’s Managing Director Arjan Meijer. Arjan Meijer said: ‘We were delighted to be part of this campaign and to help spread the word about Apprenticeships within the region. KLM UK Engineering has been running and supporting apprenticeship programmes for over 25 years and will continue to support for years to come with the partnership withCity College Norwich and the Norwich International Aviation Academy’.

Norse Commercial services recently added the latest all-electric van to its fleet.

The Nissan E- NV200 Acenta Rapid will be used by the company’s Transport Division for collection and delivery within Norwich and surrounding areas.

Norse’s Group Transport Manager John Mellor said; “We already operate a number of electric vehicles in our grounds maintenance department, and this latest technology all-electric van will add to the green credentials of the Norse Fleet. We constantly monitor performance and cost and we plan to use more vehicles of this type in the future, on contracts within the City of Norwich and indeed other suitablelocations in the UK where Norse has a presence.”

According to the manufacturer the vehicle has a distance of 106 miles per charge and can be charged overnight or on a rapid four hour charge at specific sites. It has a Zero Co2 gm/km and a carbon footprint of zero tonnes, compared with a similar diesel van with a Co2 rating of 115 gm/Km and a carbon footprint of 10.65 tonnes.

“Norse is committed to environmental sustainability wherever possible,” John Mellor added, “and the introduction of this latest vehicle to our fleet will make a significant contribution. Going by the Abor Environmental Alliance figures, for each similar vehicle we would have to plant approximately 10 trees, each livingfor forty years, to absorb this level carbon.”

Based on 15,000 miles per annum, the company believes it will realise a minimum cost saving of £2500 over afive-year vehicle life, for this class of all-electrical vehicle.

We are thrilled to be working with new restaurantPecking Order to help them well, get up the Pecking Order!

Pecking Order (https://www.peckingorder.co.uk/)offers delicious rotisserie chicken, burgers and cocktails. The restaurants combines a decor and flavour of shoreditch is the suburban neighbourhood of Stanmore, North London.

When we met Pecking Order, they were generating a lot of interest on social media and a lot of word of mouth marketing but they were not appearing on the first page of Google for their brand name or related searches. This means that for all those people looking to make an enquiry, they were struggling to find the company’s website and contact number. But we changed all that …

What we did for Pecking Order

Forunately when it comes toSearch Engine Optmisation we’re no spring chicken. Wehave taken two weeks to give Pecking Order some real presence on Google. As a local business, we had to pay special attention to Google’s Pigeon update – the local business algorithm.

First, we added the Pecking Order websiteto local directories such as 192.com, 118.com, Hotfrog and Yell.com. This proved to Google that they were a real company with a consistent address and telephone number.

Next, we added some more trust signals to their site. We added a link out to their TripAdvisor page to show that they were a place of business with active reviews – and remarkably they have accumulated a number of reviews in a short space of time.

We also added alt-text to the images on their current website so that Google could read the page easier and we added social media buttons so users could actively share the page to people they knew.

With these small amendments, the rankings quickly boosted to the first page for keywords such as Pecking Order, Pecking Order Stanmore and Pecking Order London and this is visible in the graph on the right.

We also set up a PPC campaign in the meantime so that the restaurant can still capture customers for various keywords until all their rankings on number 1.

We are excited about continuing to work with Pecking Order on SEO, PPC and Social Media.

We are thrilled to announce that the new website for Educating Matters is now live. Tudor Lodge Consultants have been working with Educating Matters since January to develop the new look and feel of their website. Educating Matters was started by Rachel Vecht in 2001 and offers parenting classes and seminars in the home or workplace. Ideal for busy working parents with lots of childen, the lunch-time or after-work sessionsprovide parents with techniques and ways to make the most of their time with their children and help them manage things like homework, sibling rivalry and bullying. The classes have been so popular that Rachel has been asked to speak in major organisations across the UK including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

What we did for Educating Matters

If you look at the images on your right, you will see the difference between the new and old website.We were passionate about bringing more colour to the Educating Matters website and more visual elements. As a result, we workedwith a video production company to created an animated gif which loops every 15 seconds. So as you enter the website, it plays this type of video and you can see exactly the type of thing that Educating Matters offers. For prospective clients, they get an idea of what the company offers immediately and can visualise this taking place in their offices.

So in addition to more colour and visual elements, we created a site that was easier to navigate and is fully responsive on both mobile and tablet too.

We also worked on the Search Engine Optimisation for the website, because this is our speciality. We started by doing thorough keyword research and sitting with the founder Rachel to determine the most target keywords and what we couldrank for such as parenting courses and work life benefit.

So we created individual landing pages which are easily accessible on the header or footer of the website and each has a page filled with relevant content, Youtube videos and images. In addition to the content, we added trust signals to the site including links to the recent news articles, clients, case studies and testimonials. We also incorporated social media buttons on each page and a Google map to show that Educating Matters is a business with a real location.

We look forward tocontinuing to work with Educating Matters to add more contextually relevant content and buildclean and reputable links from authoritative websites.

Having established themselves delivering CIPD and ILM qualifications across East Anglia, Blue Sky Professional Development are pleased to announce their approval to deliver Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) programmes at a new location in Essex.

Kate Woods, Director of Blue Sky, reported that enquiries from HR professionals across East Anglia have steadily increased with much more interest from Suffolk and Essex than in previous years so they have decided to expand their services.

All Blue Sky students benefit from the support of experienced tutors at group workshops and now they will have a choice of attending these and tutorials at either our existing Norwich base or our new venues in Colchester.

Blue Sky are delighted to be delivering CIPD programmes at all levels: Advanced, Intermediate and Foundation from Weston Homes Community Stadium, home of Colchester United FC, and the North Colchester Business Centre. Both these venues are just off the A12 giving easy access to clients traveling from Ipswich, Chelmsford and Southend, as well Colchester itself.

Blue Sky are looking to start their new programmes from Colchester in the Autumn and are running course briefing session for prospective students throughout the summer.

If you would like more information or would like to book onto a briefing session please contact Beth or Kate office@blueskypd.co.uk