Credit scores offer a fast, objective way for lenders to assess your eligibility and credit risk. Lenders combine your credit score with the information in your credit report to assess your risk as a borrower. Your credit rating builds up your financial picture which enables financial institutions to predict your future behaviour based on what you’ve done in the past. For instance, if your score is high, you seem like less of a risk; if your score is low, lenders may not be inclined to let you borrow as you present a risk. It is important to maintain a healthy credit rating as your credit score affects many aspects of life such as, your mortgage, car finance, prospective jobs and your ability to start your own business. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to deter yourself from bad credit…
Setting up payment reminders may seem obvious, but one missed payment to a lender could greatly affect your credit score. Setting up direct debits means that you can make minimum payments on your credit cards without having to think twice.
Check that you are on the electoral roll. Lenders need to be sure you are who you say you are and without assurance of your address and ID it is much harder to get accepted for credit. You can register to vote at any time on [email protected] to make contact today.
Norwich solicitors firm Hatch Brenner is supporting local charity Norwich & Central Norfolk Cruse Bereavement Care as they hold an informal networking breakfast on Thursday 14 March.
The Business Breakfast, to be held at the Assembly House on Theatre Street, is a chance for representatives from local businesses to discover more about the work of the charity, how they help, and why bereavement support is so important for each individual the charity supports.
Becky Bushell, Norwich & Central Norfolk Cruse Bereavement Care fundraiser commented: “We are looking forward to holding our next Business Breakfast at the Assembly House in association with our long-term community partner Hatch Brenner Solicitors. It will be great to see familiar faces from the business community, as well as to introduce our work to new professionals. Support from the local community is vital in allowing us to operate and provide specialist support via our highly trained volunteers.”
Dawn Parkes, Hatch Brenner Managing Partner, added: “Through our partnership with Norwich & Central Norfolk Cruse Bereavement Care, we have seen first-hand how committed the team are in caring about and understanding the needs associated with bereavement. Cruse is often the only place people have to turn to when someone has died. The Business Breakfast is a good opportunity for the charity to showcase their work. It will be lovely to network with contacts and friends from the local community and to enjoy some delicious breakfast thanks to our neighbours at the Assembly House.”
For further information or to book your place at the Business Breakfast, please contact Becky Bushell at [email protected] or call 07392 080 994.
The Business Breakfast is on Thursday 14 March, 8am – 930am, with a suggested £10 per person donation to the charity.
Norwich & Central Norfolk Cruse Bereavement Care, 68 St Augustine’s Street, Norwich. NR3 3AD.
We were delighted to be approached by Eskenzi PR, a specialist PR agency that focuses on tech and cybersecurity across the UK and the globe. The role of tech PR is crucial to push out industry updates including changes in regulation, legal implications and other news stories such as hacking. Eskenzi PR have emerged as one of the leaders in this space and their work for the community and enterprise has been acknowledged with The Queen’s Award.
How We Approached Their Site
Carrying out an SEO campaign, we always start by confirming all the keywords that the client wishes to target. In this case, it included things like tech pr company, cybersecurity PR and PR agency London. Next, we have to incorporate all these keywords into the site, either through dedicated landing pages or putting the keywords onto prominent pages such as the homepage or services page. These words are incorporated in the content or better, the meta-title and main h1 heading, so this is weighted far more by Google.
Clean Up of The Site
We always insist on carrying out a clean up of the site in month 1. Using tools such as Screaming Frog and SEMrush, we are able to identify a number of things that need to be fixed, looking at the 189 pages on the website. This includes optimising every meta-title, meta-description, h1, images with alt-text, internal links, sitemap, robots txt and more. This achieves to make the site easily to index by Google and a much cleaner navigation for the user.
Link Building
Eskenzi PR have already generated natural links through their awards and working in the PR space. Our role was to take this up a level by getting links specifically from tech and marketing websites, including TechRound, Talk Business and more. The idea is make the site’s backlink profile to be very relevant to tech and PR and also have strong links and not just those on directories and blogs.
We have seen strong progress in the first month and are excited about taking the firm to the next level.
Our local (and great) university here in Norwich, is the University of East Anglia or UEA. It has a history of funding new innovation, helping small businesses raise capital to bring their innovative ideas to market.
Their offer is comprehensive. This includes funding loans which typically are issued over three years with an attractive interest rate. Certainly below the commercial norm. These loans can be on a convertible basis, meaning they can be converted to equity later. They will also consider taking an equity stake in the company. Above all they offer first class advice, and have access to all the UEA has to offer too!
They will help in any way they can. You don’t need to have any connection to the University either so get in touch!
They have a new initiative called ‘Invest East’. Working with Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils, and New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership. Saffron explains all in this excellent podcast which you can listen to here: Access to funding via UEA
As a company that frequently operates in potentially hazardous environments, it is understandable that at Monthind we place health and safety at the centre of all our operations. The health and well-being of our cleaning operatives, staff members, clients and the general public is a top priority, which is why we spend so much time, effort and money each year on ensuring our health and safety standards are second to none. Site-specific risk assessments are drawn up before a contract begins, which inform the training our staff receive and ensure full compliance with both our own stringent health and safety policy and all applicable legislation. COSHH assessments are also carried out, along with any other assessments that address additional risks particular to a given contract. Outside specific contracts, we pride ourselves on delivering on-going training to our staff in the form of internal and external group training sessions, toolbox talks and newsletters. Our team members possess a range of high-level safety certifications, giving us a depth of knowledge and expertise that underpins the trust our clients have in us. Additionally, independent audits are carried out by our Business Compliance Department at all our sites, which assess cleaning operation, site health and safety, training requirements and cleaning standards. Audit reports are then passed to you, our client, to assist in the smooth running of all your cleaning operations.
Converting website visitors into customers is a really common challenge faced by businesses. Seeing that our marketing efforts are set up well to get people to browse but less so to get people to buy, it isn’t really that much of a surprise. I think it is something uniquely British that we don’t like to ‘ask’ or ‘push’ for a sale. Having spent time with a number of sales trainers, closing a deal is indeed something we just seem to find unnaturally hard. It seems it is the same with marketing. We get asked all of the time for help with converting interest (most often expressed as website traffic) into sales, and we’ve got quite good at it using a number of different methods. There are a few approaches that a business can use to do this but few create quite as much emotive response as online display retargeting. You will have seen this. After browsing a website you then see ads for the product you looked at when you travel around the web. Some see these adverts as haunting and intrusive, some ignore them completely, others see them and are reminded/convinced and click to buy. As a business owner and marketer you can’t ignore this as method of driving conversions… even if you don’t really like seeing the ads yourself. The way we see success with online display retargeting is to only show ad content that is directly related to the page a user looked at and to deliver a really strong call to action. So if your website visitor was looking at your Nike Air Max trainer page, then retarget them with a Nike Air Max offer, not one for shorts, or your brand, or anything else frankly. Timing is also critical: to get display retargeting to work, a business really does need to understand their website visitors and be able to act quickly when they spot interest. Strike while the iron is hot and all that! We have lots of experience in display retargeting, and other conversion tactics. If you want to find out more have a look at the online display retargeting content on our website or drop us a line at [email protected].
It was only a few weeks ago that I set up East Lodge Consulting Ltd and I have been busy networking and starting professional relationships with business owners across the region. Some time ago, I was advised to broaden my activities with one or two side hustles. So, I’ve also been pursuing one of my pipe dreams as well as establishing my consultancy business. This looks like it might turn into something fantastic – a supersized side hustle.
Chasing your dreams can sometimes feel like a fool’s errand. When I completed my first novel, There There My Dear, a few years ago I dreamt that it would launch my career as a novelist. I was certain that my book would be snapped up by a publisher and that it would rise to the top of the best-sellers list in no time.
Then came the rejection letters and emails from literary agents who wrote that they loved the book but would not be looking to represent me. This happened time after time and chasing my dream turned into something of a nightmare.
About a year ago I decided to write the sequel to There There My Dear. Looking back I don’t know if there was any logic behind the decision, I just knew I had to do it. In the autumn of 2018 I was wondering what to do with the whole writing dream, and I asked a few friends if they knew anybody in the literary world. After all, there’s no harm in asking, and our networks are often larger than we imagine.
To cut a long story short, I am now speaking with an agent about There There My Dear, the sequel and the final book in the trilogy. He loves the story, the characters and my writing style. The next step is for my agent to bring on board a publisher – I am so excited!
This all goes to show that chasing your dreams, listening to good advice and involving your network can bring great results!
Employers urged to get second hand machinery inspected following death
A routine safety inspection could have prevented the death of James Criddle, 29, who suffocated when his clothes became caught in the screener machine, purchased on eBay and missing its safety guards, in May 2017. His employer, Robert Baldwin, of Baldwin Skip Hire in Norfolk, was cleared by a jury at Norwich Crown Court of manslaughter, but found guilty at Norwich Crown Court of neglect in failing to discharge a duty.
Gavin Dearsley, Risk Management Advisor at Alan Boswell Risk Management (ABRM), said the tragic accident was entirely avoidable had the correct health and safety procedures been followed. “Sadly, accidents like this happen more regularly than they should,” he added. “Financial pressures in the business world often lead to companies trying to find ways of saving money by buying machinery that isn’t new, and therefore not built to modern design standards. As we’ve seen, the implications of that, and of then not having a health and safety inspection, can lead to tragic consequences.”
Mr Criddle was operating the £18,000 screener machine, which sorts material of different sizes and includes a cylindrical drum, when the absence of safety guards caused his clothes to become caught. He died from suffocation, just five days after the machine had been brought to the skip hire site. In his defence, Baldwin said it was “not obvious” that the machine was missing vital safety equipment.
Make sure your equipment is safe
But that misses the point, as under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER) – the UK implementation of the European Work Equipment Directive – the law requires employers to ensure all equipment is safe for use, and that full training is given to employees. In other words, even if employers think second hand equipment looks safe, they have a legal duty to ensure that it is.
“For us, with a trained eye looking at it, it would have been obviously unsafe,” said Mr Dearsley. “It’s incredibly sad to see this because I know that if we had been out to see that machine before it was used we could have stopped it happening. There is obviously a cost involved, but you can’t put a price on someone’s life. Often they have no instruction manuals, no warranties, and they have issues, whether it’s missing guards or faulty e-stops on electrical machinery.”
He added that, while the “gold standard” would be for engineering and manufacturing companies to only use modern equipment built to European standards and CE marked, such a scenario is economically unrealistic. “It’s completely unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to keep buying new equipment, so it’ll never happen, and you can get some really good second hand equipment that’s built fantastically well,” he said. “But the law requires employers to do a risk assessment of the machinery, and that’s where we can make a real difference.”
Costs for machinery risk assessments will vary depending on the number of machines and the time taken, but could be as little as a few hundred pounds.
Alan Boswell Risk Management can help
If you have questions about your existing equipment, want advice before purchasing something new, or want a full health & safety audif for your business, Alan Boswell Risk Management can help. Based in Norwich and operating across the country, our experts work with companies in a wide variety of industries.
To find out more, give our risk management team a call on 01603 967900.
Whether it’s a beer garden bumble or a full blown outdoor extravaganza, there’s something about summer in Norfolk that makes you want to get exploring the opportunities to take work…and marketing for that matter, outside. With so many fantastic examples of events leveraging the outdoors as their energizing venue from the Norfolk Show to Norfolk Enterprise Festival, to Fresher than a Fayre, we’ve extended our range of outdoor products ready for the summer events season.
We’re committed to quality and recently launched our campaign for better portables, which we have considered in our choice of outdoor products. So if you or your business are looking to take events outside, there’s more to us than meets the eye and we’re always on hand to offer no obligation advice on getting the most of outdoor events as well as offering a full design, management and production service for all your further needs.
If you’re looking to plan your own outdoor event or have a product in mind, get in touch today to ask how we could help.
Freebridge is once again inviting applications to their Community Fund, with £5000 being made available to local community groups and charities.
The housing provider’s annual fund gives local groups the opportunity to apply for grants of up to £1000 to support community and voluntary activities that meet the needs of the community within West Norfolk.
Applications are welcome from groups whose aims include:
Promoting health and wellbeing;
Tackling disadvantage;
Supporting local solutions to local needs;
Promoting community cohesion;
Developing sustainable and supportive communities, and
Improving the environment.
Last year among the successful applicants to the £5000 fund were 4 Transform, Age UK Norfolk, the Hanseatic Union, the King’s Lynn Men’s Shed, Sing Your Heart Out, South West Norfolk Youth Opportunities Project and The Garage Trust Ltd. The allocation of the money available is decided by a panel made up of Freebridge employees and members from their Tenant Panel.
Freebridge Director of Housing, Robert Clarke, said: “Freebridge is committed to supporting community groups and the work they do across our region and through our fund we can provide financial help to projects and initiatives that are making a real difference to people’s lives and helping to support a better West Norfolk.”
Norfolk Community Foundation manages the fund on Freebridge’s behalf. Any community or voluntary group wishing to apply, or just find out more about the Freebridge Community Fund can visit https://www.norfolkfoundation.com/Freebridge-Community-Housing-Fund.html or telephone 01603 623958 or email [email protected]. The closing date for applications is Friday 17 May 2019.
Ever wondered whether TV advertising is still important, and how it’s adapted over the years? Here’s a great podcast with the MD of JMS Group Francesca de Lacey based at Hethersett just outside Norwich. JMS are leaders in the field of TV advert creation, working with leading brands to create imaginative capmapigns that deliver. They don’t just create TV adverts, but anything to do with media in their purpsoe built studios and they have a fascinating history.
Whether you have an office full of hayfever sufferers, or you and your family suffer from this annual problem, you may not immediately think of blinds as a solution. However, Louvolite, one of our fabric suppliers, has created Pollergen™ – a unique fabric treatment that has the Allergy UK seal of approval.
Pollergen™ treated fabrics contain an active ingredient that captures and then neutralises the pollen, thereby helping to reduce the effects of hayfever. All Pollergen™ fabrics can be washed or wiped down with little effect on the pollen reducing qualities. This is because the active formulation continuously migrates to the surface of the fabric, providing many years of protection. Norwich Sunblinds make bespoke blinds for homes and offices, and Pollergen™is just one of the options available. If you are looking for commercial blinds, we can also help you with other options such as antibacterial and antifungal finishes, solar protection and anti-glare coatings, and we can ensure that your blinds are fire-retardant. We’ll visit you to chat through your needs and to take measurements. We can also help with extra large or unusual shaped windows in commercial buildings.