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We’re proud to say that we’ve just been confirmed as official sponsors and filmmakers for NNF2018 <a s to come… What will you go and see?

AFI KLM E&M subsidiary is delighted to announce the signing of a Commercial Goods Consignment Contract with Monks & Crane.

A European leader in the regional jets & narrow body aircraft market and having an internationally acknowledged expertise on the Boeing 737, Embraer 170/190, BAe146/Avro RJ, Fokker 70/100 & Airbus A320 Family, KLM UK Engineering is delighted to confirm its contract with Monks & Crane.

KLM UK Engineering has been working in partnership with Monks & Crane for a number of years already.

Alan Sumption, Supply Chain Manager commented “We are delighted to continue our relationship with Monks & Crane and now have an opportunity to move forward with solutions that will improve our supply chain efficiiency. We have always appreciated the way Monks & Crane work with us to help improve our business”.

Andy Smith, Account Manager at Monks & Crane – “Having been an existing supplier to KLM UK Engineering over the years, we are delighted to reach a further long-term agreement regarding the supply of aid to production materials. Monks & Crane and KLM UK Engineering work very closely together to achieve a shared vision of driving cost down, and to continually improve our supply chain solution. On behalf of Monks & Crane I would like to thank the KLM UK Engineering team for their continued support, and also for creating a wonderful partnership”

Flagship Group and Victory Housing Trust have announced that they are in talks to consider working in partnership. If the discussions result in a partnership, the combined organisation would become the largest East Anglian-based housing group.

Talks are at an early stage, but the boards of both organisations have agreed that working together could generate more opportunities to invest in local communities. The proposed partnership would create a 28,000 home landlord which would be able to deliver 10,000 new homes of which 7,000 will be affordable over the next ten years, as well as enhancing services to residents and investing £500 million in maintaining and improving existing homes.

The structure of any new partnership is still being discussed, but it is envisaged that Victory would join the Flagship Group, retaining its identity and ensuring continuity of tenancy for residents and of employment for staff.

Philip Burton, Chair of Victory Housing Trust, said: “We are exploring whether through working together we can deliver more new affordable homes and better quality services to our residents and our communities. An important part of this will be retaining and developing our people, as well as being able to invest more to meet housing need in our region.”

Peter Hawes, Chair of Flagship Group, added: “Our organisations share similar visions and values, and through working with our staff and customers we will explore how best to jointly manage our homes in Norfolk – bringing the best of both organisations together.”

Businesses have been sharing their own activities to help drive the delivery of the Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk.

Nearly 300 businesses attended the events, taking the opportunity to feed their activities and ideas into the delivery plans for the strategy, which was launched in the autumn.

The sessions, including events run with Norfolk Chamber of Commerce in King’s Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth, followed a series of workshops during the development of the strategy last year which saw a further 1,000 businesses, public sector partners and organisations take part.

For each event, businesses shared the ways in which they are already working to support the three key themes in the strategy: ‘Our Offer to The World’, ‘Driving Inclusion and Skills’ and ‘Driving Business Growth and Productivity’.

Hayley Mace, Head of Communications at New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “We’ve been delighted with the turnout and engagement at our events. The strategy has been a collaborative project since the start so it was great to see so many people joining us to share what they currently do in their organisations and the interventions they’d like to see to be able to make more change.

“All of the activities shared at the events will be fed into the delivery plans along with inputs from local authorities, our sector groups and education leaders. We’ll be looking for fantastic ideas and investigating how we can roll those out across a wider area. We’ll also see where there’s duplication of activity and where there are gaps which need filling. The strategy sets ambitious targets – including 88,000 new jobs and 30,000 new businesses – so if we’re going to achieve those, it’s vital that we get the delivery plan in place so we can start taking the actions we need.”

The delivery plan will be completed late in the spring.

To find out more about the Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk, visit newanglia.co.uk/our-economic-strategy

The Government has launched a web app, called “Sorting out Separation”, which offers parents advice and shows where they can access further support. It is, claims the government, a “one-stop-shop for any parent going through a separation”. Emma Alfieri reports.

The Department for Work & Pensions press release details a YouGov poll out today (commissioned by the DWP) which found that 300,000 families experience separation every year. The poll also found that around five million parents have gone through separation and further that over four million children now live in separated families – which is, it states, equal to a third of children in Britain.

Work and Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, said “The app covers everything from how to avoid a separation to coping with the emotional impact of breaking up, accessing legal or housing support and arranging child maintenance. The Department for Work and Pensions worked closely with the Department for Education and Ministry of Justice in developing the new service, in conjunction with the voluntary and community sector. It forms part of a £20m fund announced earlier this year to help support separating parents”.

Emma Alfieri from our family law team comments: “This app has no doubt been developed in light that legal aid funding for most family law cases will come to end in April next year. Whilst the app will be an informative tool for parents, it is certainly no substitute for taking specialist legal advice, which is always recommended on separation”.

For further help with family law matters please contact our family law team.

Norfolk data centre experts MIGSOLV have chosen East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) as their featured charity for 2018.

MIGSOLV, who deliver the world-class Gatehouse centre in Norwich, aim to help EACH raise their profile and funds towards their Nook Appeal.

‘We all hope we never need a charity like EACH. But for critically ill children and their families, it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of what they do’ says David Manning, Managing Director of MIGSOLV. ‘As many of the MIGSOLV staff are parents, it was a unanimous decision to support them however we can.’

EACH supports children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. They deliver care both in the family home and in EACH’s hospices in Milton in Cambridgeshire, The Treehouse in Ipswich and Quidenham in Norfolk.

The hospices are friendly and welcoming places, supporting children and families at a very difficult and anxious time. The staff don’t wear uniforms and everyone is encouraged to regard the hospice as their home-from-home.

EACH’s Nook appeal is currently looking to raise £10 million for a new facility in the heart of Norfolk to replace the aging Quidenham hospice. EACH have many fund-raising activities planned in 2018, including their annual ‘Ride-for-life’ 200-mile sponsored cycle ride in July.

‘In our small way, hopefully we can increase awareness and funding for this very important local charity’ concludes David. ‘I’d recommend other businesses become involved too, as it’s an easy and rewarding way to help the charity raise its profile and money.’

MIGSOLV’s Gatehouse data centre in Norwich is the region’s only purpose-built commercial data centre, providing space, power, cooling and physical security for organisation’s computer servers and IT equipment. Renovated at a cost of £12 million in 2012, it helps businesses increase their resilience by protecting their data against threats including terrorism, power failure and extreme weather.

More details of EACH can be found at www.each.org.uk. More details of MIGSOLV can be found at www.migsolv.com.

Paris, Amstelveen, Norwich – March 2018 – AFI KLM E&M subsidiary is delighted to announce the signing of an extension to its line maintenance agreement with BA CityFlyer.

Market leaders in the best total value for money in regional and narrow body aircraft maintenance on the Boeing 737, Embraer 170/190, BAe146/Avro RJ, Fokker 70/100 & Airbus A320 Family, KLM UK Engineering is delighted to confirm its contract with BA CityFlyer and pleased to announce they have reached agreement to increase the level of line maintenance support they are providing BA CityFlyer on their ERJ170/190 aircraft.

Alan Lawson, Line Maintenance Manager – ‘KLM UKE is delighted to continue its working relationship with BA CityFlyer at its Edinburgh line station and look forward to many more years of working together’.

About BA CityFlyer

Launched on 5th March 2007, BA CityFlyer is a wholly owned subsidiary of British Airways operating a network of UK domestic and European services from London City airport. We have expanded our aircraft fleet and route network at London City Airport where we are now officially the largest operator with the highest number of destinations and customers. This year British Airways serves 26 destinations from London City Airport, and are perfect options for both business and leisure travel. BA CityFlyer currently operate a fleet of twenty-one aircraft comprising 76-seat Embraer 170s and 98-seat Embraer 190SR’ following extensive recent fleet expansion. BA CityFlyer also operates a variety of charter services from airports around the UK on behalf of other airlines, tour operators and private clients.

In a first for the housing association, Flagship Group is working together with Norfolk Community College and Norwich City Football Club to help its customers to gain new skills and find employment.

The Norfolk Community College Project is funded by the European Social Fund and National Lottery, through the Big Lottery Fund, to help unemployed adults in Norfolk back into training and employment.

The partnership kicks off this Wednesday (14 March), when Norwich City Footballer Matt Jarvis will be visiting Bowthorpe Main Centre on the College’s Information Bus. Between 10am and 3pm the Norfolk Community College team will be offering advice on building self-esteem, preparing for interviews, and accessing courses, training, volunteering and work experience.

Matt Jarvis will be visiting from 11am to 11.30am to meet football fans. People wanting access to specialist support overcoming barriers to employment, including housing problems, debt and mental health are also invited to come along and find out more about the project.

Flagship Group Estates Officer Anthony Yallop and Flagship Corporate Social Responsibility Manager Callum James will be at the event to answer questions.

Callum said: “With over 450 residents in the Norwich area, it seemed like a really good place to hold our first partnership event of this kind.

“We are passionate about giving back to the community, so we thought this would be a great way of doing that. We hope lots of people will come along to seek advice or just have a general chat.”

Stuart Jennings, Norfolk Community College’s Project Lead, said: “The Norfolk Community College project is delighted to have joined forces with Flagship Group and Norwich City Football club for this event. By bringing the mobile training bus to Bowthorpe, we are really pleased to help more adults in our community access advice and develop the skills they need to find employment.”

Norwich City’s Head of Partnership Activation Sam Jeffery said: “As an official partner of the Football Club we are delighted to support Flagship’s community initiative and be represented at their Bowthorpe event, which we wish every success.”

You can find the College’s Information Bus at Bowthorpe Main Centre this Wednesday (14 March) from 10am until 3pm.

We are thrilled and proud to announce that we are working with Cedar Dean Group across their entire online presence, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and online lead generation. Our SEO and website teams are working very closely with the in-house marketing team at Cedar Dean across a number of their websites including their Cedar Dean Commercial website and Cedar Dean Leisure.

The Cedar Dean group of companies is a rapidly expanding business which already boasts Central London offices and a large, growing team of property and lease experts. Cedar Dean also work with some of the largest brands in the UK as well as those new to the UK, helping them with commercial, leisure and other potentially complex lease deals and negotiations.

With the Tudor Lodge team possessing swathes of experience in the mortgage, property and financial markets both on and offline, Cedar Dean Group have brought us in to help their business at this exciting time of expansion and development.

What we are doing for Cedar Dean

Working across a number of sites under a single brand umbrella has meant that we have had look carefully at each website in its own right whilst always keeping the brand identity and values at the forefront of our mind throughout the process. The Cedar Dean Group of websites are built on both WordPress and Silverstripe content management systems (CMS), both of which have their strengths yet throw up their own challenges.

We have started this process by assessing each website’s CMS, looking at what each website needs for its specific position in the property industry and we have also been carefully working to enable the necessary SEO-related updates and amendments across their websites. Updates and crawling factors that we have fixed include:

Meta Data – With the meta data being one of the first and most fundamental ranking factors for both Google and other search engines, this has been one of the first things we have started to work on updating. Properly optimised meta data can be the difference between ranking on page 2 or page 1, as it is this data that users see in Google search as well as what Google pays some of the most attention to.

Error Fixes and Clean Ups – Including broken links and website crawl errors, these can have devastating effects on both rankings and user experiences, with Google rewarding websites that offer the cleanest and most streamlined user experiences. Moreover, each website under the Cedar Dean umbrella has its own targets to pursue online and therefore very different meta data requirements.

Backlink Profiles and PR – As with most other SEO campaigns, having a strong backlink profile (the links that point towards a website from third party websites) remains very important. We have therefore been working with some of our partners to secure Cedar Dean online PR which has naturally lent itself to some backlinks to strengthen the online as well as the brand positioning of the Cedar Dean websites.

Content and Targeting – We are continually ensuring that Cedar Dean are able to target the ideal people; prospective clients and customers via unique and SEO-friendly content. This has meant creating landing pages and formulating a solid content plan which will take their websites to the next level online.

Results so Far

Whilst we are still in the very early stages of our exciting work with the team at Cedar Dean Group, there have already been a few positive movements online with regards to some of their current target keywords, with many of their preferred search terms starting to show movement as Google re-ranks them. We look forward to continuing our progress online with Cedar Dean Group and we look forward to helping the company reap the rewards of the ongoing works throughout 2018.

A founding director of Norfolk-based The Recruit Venture Group has expressed relief after choosing MIGSOLV’s The Gatehouse data centre in Norwich to house and protect their crucial IT and data.

“With responsibility for over 7,000 UK workers and 300 staff, our IT is critical. Downtime could cost millions.” says Danny Parr, Business Launch and IT Director for the £140 million turnover group. “It’s such a relief migrating our computer systems to MIGSOLV. Now we can sleep at night knowing the physical protection we’re receiving is second to none.”

Established in 1996, the group has become a hugely successful name in UK recruitment. In 2016, The Recruit Ventures Group underwent a significant restructure to focus on establishing new joint ventures with budding recruitment entrepreneurs. It has now launched and supported over 43 partner recruitment businesses all over the UK.

“Our IT is critical to thousands of people. Our partners need to know they can get on with finding the right employees for their clients whilst we take care of the rest” adds Danny. “With GDPR looming, it was great to discover MIGSOLV’s world-class data centre right here on our doorstep. They made the move simple and are on hand 24/7 to help with anything our team needs.”

MIGSOLV own The Gatehouse in Norwich, the region’s only purpose-built data centre. It houses business’s computer servers and IT equipment, protecting data from threats including theft, extreme weather, power cuts and terrorism.

“The Recruit Venture Group is an amazing success,” says David Manning, MIGSOLV’s Managing Director. “It’s been fantastic helping Danny and his fellow directors relax knowing we’re keeping their IT secure. With GDPR legislation taking effect in May, we’re keen to be part of the solution for the East’s best and brightest businesses.”

Inside The Gatehouse data centre, The Recruit Venture Group’s IT equipment is now housed within air-conditioned and humidity control racks. Access is heavily guarded, whilst 8 days power generation and some of the fastest connectivity in the region, keep their IT online and accessible whatever happens.

“Like so many companies, The Recruit Venture Group are heavily dependent on IT despite it not being what they do” concludes David. “We’re always delighted when we can help businesses large and small to make their data security one less thing to worry about.”

More information on The Recruit Ventures Group can be found at www.recruitventures.com. For more details of the data centre services MIGSOLV provide, visit www.migsolv.com.

After two years of development and a rigorous period of testing the Social Impact Measurement Toolbox from The Guild Social Economy Services CIC is now in production and available.

Aimed at small to medium sized organisations, this ‘consultant in a box’ takes into account your starting point and the extent of changes that might occur, shows how to provide the most useful/robust information to those who need it and makes the most of what you already do. It also prepares you to do more, ending with an Action Plan for you to put in place to measure the social impact of the work that you do.

What you can expect from the Toolbox:

• Six carefully designed sections that help you and your organisation think about social impact measurement, with the option to start at the beginning and work your way through all the materials or begin where it is appropriate for you.
• Help to build a robust impact measurement plan from the foundations upward, rather than jumping in with a complex tool or framework from the start. (Our Guide to Getting Started in Social Impact Measurement can help you select which well-known tools and approaches suit you best – but that’s the next stage once you’ve laid the foundations!)
• The opportunity to identify and deal with any gaps or to check if you are collecting information you don’t currently use.
• Development of your organisation’s approach to social impact measurement – but at the same time build your team’s communication, skills and knowledge around impact measurement too.

“I am really impressed with the Toolbox which appears simple to use and clear to understand” Louise Forey, Community Development Officer – Severn Vale Housing Society

Each Toolbox costs £120.00 plus carriage, packing and VAT. Further information and details of how to place an order can be found on the Social Impact Measurement page of The Guild website or call us on 01603 482220.

What did the trowel say to the spade?

No – it’s not a joke. It’s actually our latest set of 24 sponsorship bumpers for trustatrader.com now broadcasting throughout programmes during afternoons on ITV3.

This was one shoot where our crew was frequently caught lying about! That’s because our concept involved using tools as puppets, and so it was a case of getting down on the floor and waving those arms about!

Across two long days we filmed a series of scenes featuring talking spades, paintbrushes, hammers, chainsaws and …well the whole tool cupboard really!

It was then up to our talented post-production team to bring the characters to life. Our Senior Motion Graphics Designer Hugh South gave each tool a pair of expressive, animated eyes and our Senior Sound Producer Keith Lindsay gave the tools character voices.

This project demanded a complex but enormously enjoyable crossover of live action and animation – and was proof once again that whatever visual style your TV commercial calls for, the JMS team has all the tools to make it happen!