Member News

Let UEA’s Gateway to Growth Team simplify the hiring process and unlock UEA graduate potential for your business. Our bespoke recruitment support packages are designed to connect you with UEA graduate talent and enhance your ability to recruit.

Gateway to Growth is an innovative project designed to boost engagement between graduates and Norfolk’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

The University of East Anglia (UEA) led a successful bid to the Office for Students Challenge Competition with support from New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), Chamber of Commerce, Norfolk County Council, Norwich City Council, South Norfolk Council, UEA SU, Hethel Innovation Centre, Kings Lynn Innovation Centre, Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor and the St Georges Works.

The tailor-made project comprises three strands; dedicated recruitment support for Norfolk SMEs, access to flexible graduate resource for partners of the project and additional support for UEA graduates who want to stay in the region and need support finding a job.

Dedicated Recruitment Support for Norfolk’s SMEs

The Gateway to Growth Team will simplify the hiring process and connect you with UEA graduate talent. Our expert knowledge of the graduate labour market and cost effective recruitment support will increase your visibility and enhance your ability to recruit UEA graduate talent. Your bespoke package could include:

• Improved job postings on the UEA MyCareerCentral vacancy advertising platform that will specifically target UEA graduates
• Support to write your job description in a way that will appeal to UEA graduates
• Increased exposure for your organisation and vacancies through our social media channels, networks and events
• Access to an online application form system via our MyCareerCentral platform and support with UEA candidate administration
• Support to co-ordinate and facilitate an interview/assessment day

For more information please visit our Gateway to Growth website or contact the Gateway to Growth Team on 01603 597757 or [email protected] .

Daniel Wu has opened a new walk-in tax and accountancy practice on 132 Bellegrove Road in Welling.

Daniel Wu, who joined TaxAssist Accountants in October 2019, brings with him almost 10 years of experience in tax consulting with the Big Four firms. Having found the ideal location from which to operate his welcoming and accessible shop, he is relishing working for himself.

“It’s been a long-held dream to run my own practice in my home town,” said Daniel. “I was attracted to working with small business clients and am passionate about providing a first-class service, helping them with their businesses and directly impacting on my local community.

“I was fortunate to find the ideal shop so quickly and am pleased with the fit-out and look of the shop, which provides the perfect environment for clients to come in and discuss their tax and accounting requirements. I would encourage anyone to pop in for a chat over a cup of coffee for a free initial consultation to find out more about us.”

The TaxAssist Accountants network has been operating successfully for 25 years and has over 365 shops and offices right across the UK. It specialises in servicing the needs of small businesses and currently supports over 76,000 clients.

If you are interested in finding out more about joining TaxAssist Accountants, regular Discovery Days are held, where you meet with the Directors of the franchise and find out more about the technical and business development support on offer. Call 0800 0188297 to find out more.  

Chris Sargisson, Norfolk Chambers of Commerce CEO chats with Julie Hunt, Managing Director of Face to Face Finance, a Norwich company with a very novel approach to engaging new markets.

I asked Julie what prompted Face to Face Finance to create their financially savvy little bear, called Eddie Teddie.

Julie explained “Our clients’ needs are at the very heart of everything we do, and in creating this character we can encourage and engage with a younger audience in a positive and friendly way.” 

“The earlier someone puts plans in place, the more likely they are to reach their long-term financial goals. Through Eddie we are able to engage on a different level, and our aim is to promote financial awareness as early on in life as possible.”

“Eddie’s articles and his book are aimed at young children. But it’s usually only going to reach them via their parent or carer – often after their grandparent or an older relative has pointed them in that direction. Our hope is that by getting finance on the agenda, parents of young children will stop and give their own financial situation some thought.”

She tells me “It has become a fantastic platform for us to connect with our clients, whether through our blogs or his book. We’ve had some great feedback from our clients who do share Eddie’s antics with their children and grandchildren.”

“Eddie’s book has gone down particularly well. We’ve been giving copies to our clients. Several of them have come back and asked for more copies! We know the book has made it as far as America, Australia and Canada! It’s also in local book shops so is helping get the Face to Face name in front of new audiences.”

It is clear that this platform fills an important educational role for the next generation of customers, and Julie told me “whilst his presence enables us to talk about finance, we also get to share some of the other values which are important to us as a business – such as sustainability and kindness without sounding too worthy.”

With Eddie proving such a hit, I was interested to know what’s next on his agenda?

“Eddie will be getting involved in our chosen charity for 2020, Age UK, and coming along to one of their Chinwags. He’s also beavering away on this next book – keep an eye out for it this summer!”

Don’t miss the launch event for Best Employers Eastern Region 2020

Businesses across the Eastern region can book a place at the Best Employers Eastern Region 2020 launch event, which takes place in Newmarket on Wednesday 18 March.

Best Employers Eastern Region brings together organisations from across the East of England in the collective aim of increasing employee engagement and productivity. The 2020 launch conference looks set to be an extremely inspiring event which business leaders, HR professionals and anyone with a responsibility for employee engagement and leadership are encouraged to attend.

Co-founded by professional recruitment specialists Pure, and psychometrics experts eras ltd, Best Employers Eastern Region is returning for the fifth time. Now sponsored by Archant and Birketts, the two-yearly initiative has become a force for change which business leaders across the region are using to develop their organisation’s culture and engagement levels. Best Employers 2018 was an outstanding year with over 140 organisations taking part, approximately 15,000 participants, eight award winners and 40 gold or platinum accreditations.

Guest speakers at the 2020 launch event include two engagement experts discussing how to cultivate innovative and engaging places to work. David Smith, author, consultant and business speaker, will talk about creating a highly productive, performance-based culture. He will draw on 35 years’ worth of experience in corporate change management, the last 15 years of which were spent in the turnaround of the Asda Retail Business. C-J Green, Co-founder and Executive Director of People and HR services firm BraveGoose, which focuses on the future of work, and on modern, progressive HR, will explore the tipping points for growth and engagement. Throughout the day, eight regional business leaders will also share their experiences of participating in Best Employers, including Jon Woolston, Managing Partner at MHA Larking Gowen (winners of the Best Employer category at the Norfolk Business Awards 2019) and Andy Wood, CEO at Adnams.

Lynn Walters, Executive Director at Pure and founder of Best Employers Eastern Region, said: “Creating the right culture in an environment where people can thrive is at the heart of any leader’s priorities. The Best Employers conference will bring people from like-minded organisations together to share ideas, solutions and best practice on achieving this. All of our guest speakers are passionate about employee engagement and understand how important it is in the quest to increase productivity, drive innovation and boost performance. They recognise the impact it has on achieving competitive success through enhanced employer brand and for the development of a culture which attracts, engages and retains top talent.”

The launch event will also mark the opening of the Best Employers free, ready to use and expertly designed employee engagement survey. This provides businesses with the information they need to understand their current levels of engagement, to track their progress and benchmark their organisation against some of the region’s top employers.

Lynn added: “The free employee survey, provided by eras ltd, helps organisations to understand and measure their employee engagement, and provides clarity on how and where to focus practical ideas. The more employees participate, the more reflective the feedback, and our guest speakers will share their experiences of delivering the survey and getting people involved. We are excited for Best Employers 2020. Each year the number of businesses taking part increases. It not only has a significant impact on each participating organisation, it has become an exceptional showcase of the great employers here in our region, supporting the region’s growth.”

For more information about Best Employers Eastern Region visit www.best-employers.co.uk or click here to book a place at the conference.

Hot on the heels of two wins at the Norfolk & Suffolk Tourism Awards, the Norwich Science Festival has opened up their sponsorship opportunities for the 2020 Festival.

The Festival, co-ordinated by The Forum in partnership with many organisations across the region, recently won both Family Event And Experience of the Year and Marketing Campaign Of The Year at the awards.

With over 137,000 visits in 2019, and an estimated economic value of over £2,716,000 to the local economy, sponsorship of Norwich Science Festival is a fantastic opportunity to reach new audiences, raise brand awareness, and increase knowledge of career opportunities in STEM sectors.

The Festival is made possible thanks to income generated by The Forum’s car park and the support of partners, but relies on sponsorship from businesses and organisations in the region to reach new audiences and bring in household names such as previous headline speakers Chris Packham, Dr Jane Goodall and Helen Sharman.

As well as raising brand awareness, sponsors can contribute to the Festival programme, incorporate into their Corporate Social Responsibility programme, engage with diverse audiences, and support the promotion of science and STEM education.

Joe Randlesome, Marketing Executive at ROARR! Dinosaur Adventure, said: “It was a privilege to sponsor the Zoology Day as part of Norwich Science Festival. We brought some of our animals, including ferrets, snakes and cockroaches, which allowed us to educate visitors about our Secret Animal Garden, the animals and their care. We would really recommend partnering with the Festival, we spoke to so many visitors about our park – many were really interested in dinosaurs and potentially visiting us. The Festival marketing was exceptional and it was impeccably organised on the day too.”

Find out more about the benefits of sponsoring #NorwichSciFest at https://bit.ly/SponsorNSF or contact Festival Producer Natalie Bailey on [email protected].  

The Tudor Lodge Consultants SEO team is very happy to announce a new partnership this month, this time with Griggs Homes. The family-owned construction and property development company operating in North London and the home counties wants to boost its online presence in the property sector, and through a white hat SEO strategy, this will be achieved via the expertise of our highly skilled team.

About Griggs Homes

Griggs Homes is completely dedicated to creating the home of their clients’ dreams and is passionate about providing inspirational, innovative design alongside its wealth of experience in the field.

The family-owned firm specialises in new luxury property developments in premier locations across the home counties, as well as in the commercial sector in areas of London.

How Tudor Lodge Consultants is helping Griggs Homes

Landing pages: informative, concise landing pages that have relevant keywords are integral to being ranked and indexed properly by Google. These factors both have a huge impact on how a particular page will rank. Consequently, the SEO team at Tudor Lodge Consultants has made sure that the luxury property construction firm landing pages are promoting key terms such as bespoke builders, and luxury property developers.

Building links: another important aspect of a white-hat SEO strategy is building trustworthy links within the relevant domain. In this case, with Griggs Homes, it’s making sure that the company is building backlinks with reputable websites and companies in the homes and property sector.

This is incredibly important because establishing a website as trustworthy through multiple backlinks leads to higher search engine rankings, which is the ultimate goal. This is because Google will tend to rank websites with a higher number of good quality links more positively, as they are deemed as more relevant and authoritative than others in results pages for a query.

Here at The Enterprise Centre we’re really excited about the launch of our new 3D virtual tour, courtesy of local business, Vortex Visual. The tour is now live on our website and beautifully showcases the building to anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to visit in person. You can see more for yourself here.

Covering all commercial areas of the building, Vortex Visual’s Will Wooster and Max Giddings kindly came to The Enterprise Centre early on a Sunday morning in December to ensure the spaces could be filmed when completely empty of people. It was also an ideal opportunity to get some shots of the sunrise from the stunning roof terrace.

Given the high end architectural design of the building, the option to show potential clients the tour has great implications for The Enterprise Centre. From the early days of opening in June 2015, the team were quickly aware that once people had visited the building they would be keen either to base their business there or hold a future event. Fearn Ainsworth, Commercial Manager, said ‘We’re delighted with the new 3D tour of the building. It truly is a stunning space and now people can see that for themselves even if they don’t have the opportunity to visit in person.’

The Norfolk Chamber are in part to thank for bringing the 3D tour to fruition as Angela Macdonald, Tenancy and Business Development Manager for The Enterprise Centre, first met Will and Max when visiting the Vortex Visual stand at the October Chamber B2B event at Norfolk Showground. Following a couple of meetings on location and the subsequent filming, start-up Vortex Visual have also signed up for one of the tenancy packages with The Enterprise Centre. It just goes to show how productive business events can be!

More information available from:

www.uea.ac.uk/adapt/the-enterprise-centre 01603 591366, [email protected]

www.vortexvisual.co.uk 01603 733187, [email protected]  

Greater Anglia has been named Train Operator of the Year in the Rail Business Awards 2020 – after judges praised the company for continuing to innovate and improve while also preparing for the arrival of new trains. Last year, Greater Anglia delivered a number of customer-focused improvements, including introducing the Norwich in 90 service, improving its delay repay compensation scheme (to include all delays of 15 minutes and over) and starting to introduce brand new trains. At the same time, the company made real progress in improving punctuality, which resulted in over 35,000 more trains arriving on time in 2019 (compared to 2018). This sustained punctuality drive led to some months of record-breaking performance, especially on the Great Eastern Main Line and Southend line, which saw four successive months of over 94.5 per cent of trains on time from March to June – some of the best-ever performance seen on these routes. The company also continued to invest in stations, car parks and new services and saw passenger numbers increase. Car park improvements included extending Manningtree and Shenfield car parks and installing Automatic Number Plate Recognition at 20 car parks across the network. A new station, Meridian Water, opened in June, with additional services between Stratford and Meridian Water starting in September. Meanwhile, Greater Anglia launched further ticketing initiatives to make it easier for customers to buy season tickets on Smart Cards, including developing the Greater Anglia app so season ticket holders can upload their season tickets onto their Smart Cards using their mobile phones. Jamie Burles, Greater Anglia managing director, said: “To be named train operator of the year is a tremendous accolade and a credit to the hard work and determination of everyone in our team, across the whole of Greater Anglia, to make our service much better for our customers. We have seen our improvements in punctuality recognised across the industry and have been named most improved London and the South East operator for punctuality on our commuter lines in Essex and Hertfordshire. Customer satisfaction has also increased by 8% to 81%. We’ve replaced all the trains on our rural routes with high quality, state-of-the-art new trains, with more seats and a much better travelling environment which, as they bed in, are starting to improve our reliability, as well as our customers’ on-board experiences. We have also begun to bring in new intercity trains on the main line between Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester and London. We recognise, of course, that last year ended on a difficult note on our rural lines due to signalling issues and that punctuality is not consistently where we want it to be so far this year. We’re sorry for those occasions when we have let people down and we are determined to get performance back on track as soon as possible. We fully intend to live up to our new title of train operator of the year, to continue to improve our service to our customers, raising standards further and continuing the roll out of a complete fleet of new trains.” The citation for Greater Anglia’s award at the Rail Business Awards, which are organised by the Railway Gazette, said : “Greater Anglia had an excellent year in 2018-19, continuing to innovate while preparing for the arrival of its new trains. The judges commended it for launching the Norwich in 90 service with existing stock, whilst also improving regional and commuter services.” Last year, the Stansted Express Liverpool Street to Stansted Airport service, which is managed by Greater Anglia, was named international operator of the year in the Global Air Rail Awards.

The annual celebration of science and curiosity, Norwich Science Festival, won big at last night’s Norfolk & Suffolk Tourism Awards, with two awards.

The Festival, co-ordinated by The Forum in partnership with many organisations across the region, including UEA and the wider Norwich Research Park, won both Family Event And Experience Of The Year and Marketing Campaign Of The Year at the awards ceremony held at Milsons Kesgrave Hall in Suffolk last night.

Natalie Bailey, Norwich Science Festival Producer, said: “We’re thrilled to have won the best Family Event for Norwich Science Festival. This is a brilliant recognition of how far the Festival has come its first few years, and it’s all thanks to our wonderful partners, funders, sponsors, contributors and the wider Forum team, who all come together to make it such a success.”

Jan Robertson, Norwich Science Festival Marketing Manager, said: “We’re delighted to win best Marketing Campaign for our 2018 Festival. We worked with the wider Forum team and our partners to raise awareness of this engaging and fun Festival, and with DesignPod to create exciting family friendly graphics. It’s fantastic win this award, and to acknowledge the collaborative, multi-channel marketing campaign which has helped grow the Festival immensely and reach new audiences.”

The 2020 Norwich Science Festival will take place during October half-term, with plenty of activities, talks, workshops and shows for all. Last year, over 137,000 visits were made to Science Festival events across the nine days, and generated an estimated economic value of over £2,716,000 to the local economy.

To keep up-to-date with announcements, follow @NorwichSciFest on Twitter, or Norwich Science Festival on Facebook and Instagram, and keep an eye on norwichsciencefestival.co.uk for headline announcements in July and the full programme at the start of September.

Andy Slade has opened his shop on 137 Buxton Road, Heaviley

Andy Slade FCA joined TaxAssist Accountants in March 2019 and has opened his new shop in time to benefit from self-assessment tax return season.

“I would like to thank the Norwich based Support Team who helped me to source and fit out the shop which looks great – I’m so pleased with it. It’s highly visible, well located and has plenty of parking available nearby,” said Andy. 

Andy worked in industry for eight years, culminating in becoming a group financial controller before moving to Manchester, where he began working as a contractor. Knowing that he wanted to establish his own business, he turned to franchising, discovered TaxAssist Accountants and the rest, as they say is history!

“I wanted to build something more permanent to be proud of,” explained Andy. “I also wanted to get back to having and managing my own team and be more involved in my local community. “I’ve really enjoyed meeting with and helping clients over the last 10 months, and I’ve had a really busy January. I am actively looking to grow the practice, so would encourage anyone interested in finding out more about our services to pop in for a free consultation.”

Andy’s shop joins an established network of 229 shops nationwide.

If you are interested in finding out more about joining TaxAssist Accountants, regular Discovery Days are held, where you meet with the Directors of the franchise and find out more about the technical and business development support on offer. Call 0800 0188297 to find out more.  

The historic Maid’s Head hotel was the ideal venue for our first Norwich Networking breakfast event of 2020, and the Minstrel Suite was the perfect warm welcome to the cold early start. We are all about Collaboration at The Norfolk Chambers and were thrilled to be joined by Mark Thair and members of the Breakaway networking group this morning. We also welcomed new members to the breakfast and they soon got involved in the morning. Our networking breakfasts are a great opportunity to talk about upcoming events to our members – whether it’s our International Women’s Day event with Natwest at The Aviation Academy on March 5th or our Great Yarmouth breakfast on March 19th.  There is a wide choice of events in our calendar and if you prefer a smaller event we have bespoke events happening too. Our guest speaker was Cata Parrish, Owner of Re.Source General Store and café based on Timber Hill in Norwich. Cata talked us through her journey that led her to the decision to start Re.source, how an illness forced her to prioritise her working life. Her challenges were instrumental in formatting change personally and professionally. Her zero-waste company is inspiring, courageous and successful. Not a usual occurrence at one of our breakfasts, but before we brought the event to a close we were invited for a few minutes to enjoy some guided meditation by Cata. Many thanks to Cata for sharing her sustainable life and serenity, to Georgina Postlethwaite and her staff for looking after us, and of course to all our friends that attended!

Eye Film and the 25am Networking Group have a long association and this is the second film we have produced for the group over the last few years. This time we wanted to do something different and harness the considerable talents of our animator, Oliver.  Having got to know the members too, matching their characters to an appropriate animal was great fun. Starting then from scratch by drawing the initial sketches, Oliver constructed the animation and synced the captured voices of the 25am members with their characters, simple if you know how! Recognising that not everyone finds early mornings an easy situation to handle, particularly on dark, cold winter mornings, we wanted to know if the sacrifice was worth it? What was the answer, overwhelmingly yes.

Do visit our website www.eyefilm.co.uk and look out for our forthcoming blog about the making of the animation for insights into how the magic happens.