Leicestershire’s Business Gateway and De Montfort University are working together to offer a unique opportunity to anyone with a business start-up idea.
DMU’s Crucible programme, which has successfully supported 60 businesses over the last five years, is now being made available free of charge, thanks to the Business Gateway.
The five-month Crucible Start-up programme will provide practical masterclasses in business essentials such as marketing, finance, intellectual property law, copywriting, and growth management. Each session is delivered by a businessperson who is also an expert in that area because of their personal experience with their own business.
For example, the marketing session is led by Jenny Cross, founder of marketing agency, Cross Productions. Branding and funding is led by Cristian Zuzunaga whose company creates a range of fashion and homewares using textile designs. Interior designer Abigail Hall who creates high end interiors shares her expertise in business and change management.
Jenny Cross of Cross Productions leads the Marketing Session
Sonia Baigent, chair of the Business Gateway Board, said: “It’s so important to nurture new business ideas in order to keep our economy vibrant and evolving. To do that, you have to make sure that the people with these ideas receive the very best support at the start of their journey, within a creative and stimulating environment. That’s what we’re getting with the Crucible programme.
“We know that one of the things that differentiates DMU’s approach is their focus on the individual. As well as providing the essential business foundations, the Crucible team really build people’s confidence, resilience and belief in themselves as entrepreneurs who can succeed. 85% of the businesses launched through Crucible over the last five years are still going.”
Percy Emmett of De Montfort University, who oversees the programme, said: “We are thrilled to partner with the Business Gateway to support Leicestershire’s SMEs.
“Businesses will have workshops with our team of experienced trainers who are all businesspeople with years of experience across a range of sectors. This will be supplemented with advice and mentoring through personal 1-2-1s.
“The Crucible is DMU’s flagship business start-up programme, and we are pleased that we are now able to offer our training to SMEs. Our philosophy at Crucible is to focus not just on the business idea, but on developing the resilience and confidence of these emerging entrepreneurs. That’s what’s really different about Crucible.”
Anyone interested in taking part in the Crucible Start-Up programme, which begins on 24 February, should contact the Business Gateway on 0116 366 8487 or growthhub@bizgateway.org.uk
Seven new regional Ministry of Justice (MoJ) offices will be opened across England and Wales, the Deputy Prime Minister has announced – with one in Nottingham.
The new Justice Collaboration Centres will be launched alongside a series of satellite offices as the government’s Places for Growth programme continues to move civil service roles out of London and closer to the communities it serves.
The scheme will ensure the public sector utilises the vast array of talent across England and Wales with 22,000 roles moving out of the capital by 2030.
Almost 70 percent of the MoJ workforce is already based outside of London and the South East and this move will see more than 2,000 more roles in areas like finance, human resources and digital move out by 2030, with 500 of those heading to Wales.
Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab, said: “This Government is committed to spreading opportunity more equally across communities and tackling regional inequalities.
“By having more of our staff based outside London we can recruit the best people wherever they live so that the justice system benefits from more diverse backgrounds, outlooks and experience.”
The department is creating new Justice Collaboration Centres, larger office spaces with a mix of traditional workstations and shared spaces, meeting and training rooms. They will support face to face work of staff in roles including finance, digital and human resources during training and meetings in Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, South Tyneside, Cardiff, Ipswich and Brighton.
Staff will also be based at smaller new regional Justice Satellite Offices, including desk space in pre-existing buildings like courts.
A Ripon business has been saved from closure and had its future secured by a Nottinghamshire-headquartered firm.
Ebor Concretes Ltd had been facing an uncertain future due to ongoing financial difficulties, however an acquisition by JP Concrete Products Ltd has resulted in a deal that has given a new life to the business whilst it has also saved the jobs of its 26 staff.
JP Concrete Products director Philip Cavalier-White said: “We are delighted to have been able to secure the future for Ebor Concretes’ factory and staff. We saw great value in the team of people and are excited about the future as we develop the site and staff as part of our wider business.”
Armstrong Watson’s Restructuring and Insolvency partners Rob Adamson and Mike Kienlen were engaged to assist with an accelerated sale of the business through an administration on 17 November 2021.
Working in conjunction with BPI Asset Advisory, they were able to generate lots of interest in the business and had two bidders keen to proceed. Everything was heading in the right direction until the end of November, when the director unexpectedly passed away.
Rob Adamson said: “Our job is to help people and businesses address their challenges and find solutions. The director’s sudden passing caused a few issues, however we worked with the family who were keen to proceed with the sale.
“The strategy was simple – keep the business trading whilst we tried to complete the sale process.”
It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead. It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.Here we speak to Dan Stack, director at Chevin Homes.
The house building industry enjoyed a strong 2021 and this trend looks set to continue well into 2022 with huge demand from customers which is testament to the resilience of the East Midlands property market.
As a business we are looking forward to a busy year ahead, with the high demand for homes looking set to continue in the short to mid-term. There appears to be a strong desire for buyers to purchase more individual and bespoke homes in smaller niche sites, which has been something we have been able to cater for across our various developments.
The effects of COVID, Brexit, material and labour price increases add further challenges to the already complex nature of development, but the effect of this is currently being offset by current demands, however it remains to be seen if this will continue later in the year and into 2023 once the effects of COVID have faded and life hopefully returns to something more like normal.
Later in 2022 new building regulations will come into force to promote better energy efficiency for new homes and this will be another challenge to the industry while it adopts the new supply chains required to help achieve these targets. This will again put pressure onto the home building process while the industry familiarises itself with new ways of working, so this will be a challenge to balance these effects on costs, time and customer expectations.
So while this year will undoubtedly have challenges it does look set to be coupled with a strong demand for new homes.
Derby City Council has today announced its leisure operating partner for Moorways Sports Village.
Everyone Active will manage the brand new £42 million swimming pool and water park, together with the existing athletics track and football pitches at the adjoining Moorways Stadium.
Everyone Active was founded in 1987, making it the UK’s longest-established leisure contractor. It is one of the UK’s leading operators for local leisure, gym, swim and activities facilities, and works in partnership with more than 60 local authorities to manage over 200 leisure and cultural centres across the country.
They have won numerous leisure industry awards including the UK Active Healthy Communities Award in August 2021.
Work is almost complete on the construction of Moorways Sports Village, with handover by construction partner Bowmer + Kirkland to the Council due to go ahead as planned in February. The swimming pools have been filled and all the Water Park rides commissioned. The project is forecast to be delivered on time and on budget.
Councillor Ross McCristal, Derby City Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure, Wellbeing and Sport, said: “We have achieved our aim of finding an excellent partner for the fantastic Moorways Sports Village and we are excited to be working with Everyone Active. They impressed us with their commitment to helping people become active and stay healthy and will offer something for the entire community to enjoy.”
Simon Fearn, Everyone Active’s regional contract manager, said: “As an East Midlands-founded company with extensive experience in nearby Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and East Staffordshire, it’s fantastic that we’ve been appointed to manage and develop the facilities within familiar territory that’s close to our heart.
“This outstanding centre is so important for health and wellbeing in the local area and we are incredibly privileged to be chosen to manage it on the Council’s behalf.
“We look forward to creating a close, impactful relationship with the Council which we hope will last for many years to come.”
The state-of-the art features at the new Moorways Sports Village include the main ten-lane, 50-metre swimming pool with moveable floors and booms to create three 25-metre pools, allowing flexible use for both leisure swimmers and club training sessions.
The Water Park area has two flumes, rides and slides, and a gently sloping leisure pool with a wave-creating Wow Ball, the only one in a public leisure centre in the UK.
Other facilities include a smaller teaching pool, a spa area, a gym and fitness studios. Off the main reception is a soft play area for children and a large open plan café, offering views over both the 50-metre pool and the Water Park, and a second, smaller soft play area.
Once the building has been handed over, Everyone Active will agree their action plan with the Council for getting it ready to welcome the public, and a date will be set for the opening.
The Council has approved plans to cease the leisure operation at Queen’s Leisure Centre when Moorways Sports Village opens. A date for this to happen will be confirmed when the opening date for the new facility is announced.
Plans for a new housing development in Chester Green have moved one step closer as Derby City Council asks for views on the multi-million pound scheme.
The new development – situated on the site of the former Aida factory – will be known as Haslam’s Foundry. Plans see 74 new affordable council homes built, with a mix of one and two-bedroom apartments in low-rise blocks, and two-, three- and four- bedroom townhouses. The homes will be managed by Derby Homes and let to local people in need of housing.
The new homes will boast excellent green credentials, with heat pumps and solar panels fitted, as well as being built above ground level due to the risk of higher flood levels in the future. The proposals also retain and conserve the Victorian façade of the foundry, with its tall arched windows, while removing the more modern industrial buildings.
Alongside the 74 homes, three commercial units have been proposed to front onto the City Road car park. These will be very visible to people using the busy footpath to the river and will help to integrate the new development with the existing community.
Derby City Council originally acquired the site in 2018 to enable the construction of a new flood wall as part of the ‘Our City Our River’ (OCOR) scheme. This was completed and proved its worth straight away in the flood event of November 2019. In 2021, £825,000 of funding was received from the Brownfield Land Release Fund towards the cost of cleaning up the site.
The site includes what remains of Sir Alfred Seale Haslam’s Union Foundry, including the main foundry building which dates to 1876. Haslam, who served as Mayor of Derby, was responsible for developing much of the surrounding terraced housing for his workforce, making the site of particular importance to the Little Chester Conservation Area.
The new development is intended to regenerate the area whilst recognising its important heritage, both within the Little Chester Conservation Area and the buffer zone for the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
Councillor Roy Webb, Cabinet Member for Adults, Health and Housing, said: “I’m delighted that we can now invite the public to have their say on the proposals for the redevelopment of Haslam’s Foundry. This is a great opportunity to provide an efficient and sustainable redevelopment whilst maintaining the heritage of the area.
“We must do our best to make the right use of this riverside location, so I would encourage residents to look over the proposals and the accompanying images and have their say before the end of the consultation.
“Following consultation, a full planning application will be submitted in the Spring.”
Amanda Solloway, Member of Parliament for Derby North, said: “These plans offer a really exciting prospect for regenerating the former factory site as part of the ‘Our City Our River’ (OCOR) project. It is great to see that the plans will look to keep the proud heritage of the site, whilst building sustainable housing to meet demand with strong green credentials.
“The re-development has been made possible through the strong work to-date to address the potential risk of flooding to the area. It is important that the redevelopment of the site, which has been unused for nearly 20 years, is done right and I am very pleased that residents will get to have their say.”
The proposals can be seen on the Let’s Talk Derby platform until Sunday 13 March. The project team will also be available at two drop-in sessions to discuss the plans. These will be on Thursday 10 February (3pm – 8pm) and Friday 11 February (10am – 2pm), both at St Paul’s Church Hall on Seale Street.
In a report to be published February 2 Derbyshire has been identified as one of 55 ‘cold spots’ across the country to benefit as an ‘Education Investment Area’.
In these new areas the Department for Education will target investment, support and action to help children from all backgrounds and areas to succeed at the very highest levels.
Our Member for Education, Councillor Alex Dale said: “We very much welcome today’s announcement that Derbyshire has been recognised as one of 55 areas across the country to benefit from this new government investment in education to ensure every child has the same opportunities, wherever they live and whatever their background.
“This investment into the county is a great opportunity to support our schools and will complement work we’ve already started by investing £1m into local programmes to improve reading and essential life skills for young people.
“The detail of exactly what this announcement means for Derbyshire is to follow and we will be studying it closely, but meanwhile we look forward to working with the Department for Education on our collective ambition to improve education in Derbyshire and give every child the best possible start in life.”
The new government investment will build on our work during the coronavirus pandemic to deliver our £2.8 million Holiday Activities and Food programme, which established a network of 62 community and voluntary providers to deliver more than 60,000 holiday activity and food places to vulnerable children eligible to free school meals over summer and Christmas.
At the height of the pandemic between June 2020 and October 2021 we also offered an additional 816 places through our sports and outdoor education services, delivered more than 9,000 digital devices to Derbyshire children through government schemes and provided internet connection to 562 children and young people across Derbyshire.
Insurance data intelligence provider Percayso Inform (Percayso) has secured a major £3.4m investment led by venture capital investor Praetura Ventures.
Launched in the UK insurance market in 2019, Percayso’s data and intelligence hub provides next generation insurance intelligence services and adds further value to powerful datasets, helping insurers to prevent fraud, compete on price comparison sites and reduce risk levels.
Percayso also enables insurers, brokers and other specialist managing general agents with underwriting authority in personal and commercial lines to better use, optimise and analyse their own data, ratings and intelligence strategies.
Built on a SaaS model, the technology works by aggregating data from multiple sources and making this accessible via an API, empowering insurance providers to establish key insights easier.
Percayso’s founding team has now grown to 22 people with a vast amount of previous industry experience. So far, the team has been focused on building the platform, sourcing data partners and creating key software house integrations to ready the business for scale.
The investment secured from Praetura Ventures will see product development by Percayso gather pace, enabling the business to enter new sectors of the UK insurance market.
Praetura’s investment in Percayso follows record growth for the insurtech space, after funding across the sector surpassed $15.8bn in 2021, according to the latest figures from CB Insights and Gallagher. This was more than double the total amount raised in 2020, with Q4 2021 proving the highest single quarter on record for global insurtech funding.
“This investment and our new partnership with Praetura Ventures is a powerful endorsement of our vision, our strategy and the solutions we are delivering to the insurance industry,” said Percayso Managing Director, Richard Tomlinson. “The team at Percayso has achieved an awful lot in a short space of time, but we have ambitious plans and their backing will allow us to accelerate our roadmap.
“However, this deal represents more than just funding. What really attracted us to Praetura Ventures was their approach to giving more than money to the businesses they invest in. Their understanding and enthusiasm for all things tech, together with the additional business skills they bring, will provide the support we need to take things to the next level.”
David Foreman, Managing Director at Praetura Ventures, said: “The investment team has an incredibly thorough due diligence process and we were so impressed with how highly Percayso’s clients spoke of them. The team has built a valuable tool that can clearly help insurance providers to get more from their data and create a real advantage. We’re so excited to welcome them into the portfolio and help them reach the next level.”
The Percayso deal was facilitated by Praetura Ventures’ Guy Weaver (director) and Sim Singh-Landa (investment manager) and advised by the legal team at Irwin Mitchell.
A Derbyshire IT manager who won a company prize for his sterling charity efforts over many years has donated the money to an inspiring forestry project near Smalley.
Tim Hollingshurst, EMEAI Network Services Manager at Lubrizol in Hazelwood, won the company’s Christine Sewell award, which is given annually for employees who go the extra mile in their communities.
Recipients then donate the cash to a charitable or community cause of their choice and Tim decided to give the prize money to support the Mead ‘Young People’s Forest’ in Heanor.
The Young People’s Forest, the first of its kind created in the UK, is set on a former opencast coal mine on land now owned by The Woodland Trust. Sited next to Shipley Country Park, just under two miles from the former American Adventure theme park – now being turned into a housing development – 156 acres of formerly industrial landscape are being given a greener future, including being planted with more than 250,000 trees.
The idea is that young people at the heart of the project, taking an active part, and learning about nature along the way.
Tim said it was tough to choose just one good cause but he opted for the forest scheme having planted trees there with his family and seen its inspiring work first hand.
He said: “I’ve always had a passion for forests and trees. Giving a donation to a project like this is really an investment in the future, I think. The Young People’s Forest at Mead ticks all the boxes for me.
“When I first heard about the project and saw they were creating this wonderful forest, I just thought it made sense to get involved.
“I loved planting trees at the Young People’s Forest with my family. We walk through that area and I’m going to see those trees grow. I’m pleased to have donated the money to the project. I love wildlife and all that goes with it, and it just made sense to put the money into this.”
Tim received the Christine Sewell award from Lubrizol for years of work in the community, including raising thousands of pounds for charity, running 1,000 miles in a year, and supporting hundreds of IT students at Derby College through mentorship, equipment and site visits.
He has also taken part in education projects elsewhere such as employability days at Heanor Gate Spencer Academy, and the Enterprise 4 Education initiative in Derby.
The Young People’s Forest at Mead is still fundraising to fulfil its vision for the project.
TruTac is giving UK van operators an early heads up about legislation in May that will affect those with LCVs above 2.5 tonnes (or towing trailers with a combined weight over 2.5 tonnes) travelling across international borders that are engaged in hire and reward.
From 21 May 2022, companies using vans or other light goods vehicles weighing between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes for hire and reward will require a Goods Vehicle Operator’s Licence to drive in the European Union. This includes crossing from N. Ireland into the Republic of Ireland. The move is part of the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
One of the many conditions of the licence is the appointment of a dedicated transport manager, with a valid Transport Manager Certificate of Professional Competence (TM CPC) qualification. The UK Government has said some operators may be able to obtain a temporary exemption from the TM CPC requirement if they have “appropriate experience of managing light goods vehicles in the form of temporary transport manager status.”
Another condition is for the company to demonstrate financial standing to run the business with a minimum of £1,600 available for the first vehicle and an extra £800 per additional vehicle. As with HGV operators, assets must also be kept safe and in good condition. All safety inspection and maintenance records undertaken must also be retained for a minimum of 15 months.
TruTac believes operators should be prepared for the new regulations, regardless of their status.
“This piece of legislation comes at a particularly testing time for transport operators – irrespective of the size or weight of their vehicles – and it’s the type of thing that could easily be misunderstood or overlooked completely,” says TruTac Managing Director, Jemma James.
“Those with vehicles under 3.5 tonnes will be used to a fairly straightforward approach to driver and vehicle compliance, but these new rules introduce an extra layer of complexity, especially for anyone with vans just over the 2.5 tonne mark or for those who tow trailers or semi-trailers. We want to help operators prepare for it, to ensure they are fully compliant and that their businesses are unimpeded.”
TruTac’s range of software for the transport industry is designed with compliance at its core and is just as applicable to van operators as to those with heavier vehicles. Its TruControl fleet management portal comprises a suite of software applications for simple all-round compliance management. The web-based portal includes modular products to keep control of all compliance areas in one place such as TruView, which illustrates key performance data via clear graphics and TruChecks, a configurable app for daily walkaround vehicle checks with full back-office reporting. TruFleet, intelligent fleet management software delivers real-time vehicle planning and maintenance control while TruLicence supports driving licence validation and verification with alerts and reporting.
Jemma rounds up by highlighting: “The Operators whose vehicles fall in scope under these changes will also from 1 July 2026, require the use of tachographs and recording of driving and working time in compliance with the EU drivers’ hours rules. Get prepared now, we are here and happy to help, even if it’s just a chat over coffee to discuss how your business may be affected.”
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