Member News

Hicham Al Maghouch has opened a new TaxAssist Accountants shop in the heart of Lewisham.

The shop at 338 Lewisham High Street offers tailored tax and accountancy services for small businesses and individual tax payers across the Lewisham area. “I am so pleased with the look and feel of the shop. It will provide the ideal environment for me to meet with clients to discuss their tax and accountancy needs,” said Hicham. “My career has been spent working with a range of business clients of different sizes, but it has always been my passion to work with and support the small business community.” “I’m really looking forward to meeting individual taxpayers and small businesses in the area who are in need of an accountant and would encourage anyone interested in our services to pop in to arrange a free initial consultation.

I build my business on trust and integrity and my relationships with my clients are front and centre of everything I do”.

TaxAssist Accountants Lewisham specialises in providing accountancy services, company tax returns, self-assessment returns, payroll, bookkeeping, tax savings and tax advice to small businesses.

In addition, TaxAssist also offers QuickBooks Online and Receipt Bank which help business owners manage their finances, scan receipts and stay in control of their business.  

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Architect Mirja Mainwaring and Architectural Technologist Matthew Clarke to the LSI Architects Board of Directors.

Director David Andrews commented that “As a Board we are unanimous in that we are all absolutely delighted that Matt and Mirja join us as Directors. Both appointments are of great significance to our practice, as Mirja becomes LSI’s first female Director and Matt becomes the first person to join the Board who initially joined the practice as a trainee following the establishing of our ‘grow our own’ policy to recruitment and employee development in 2002.”

Since joining in 2012, Mirja has played a key role in the development of the practices higher education portfolio.

Mirja has delivered a number of projects for the University of East Anglia, including the RICS award winning £9.5M Crome Court student accommodation, the £27M Hickling and Barton House student accommodation development and refurbishments of Earlham Hall, the lecture theatres and library.

Mirja is currently Project Associate on a landmark new £44M academic building project at the University.

Mirja has led the practice’s efforts to establish its presence in the residential sector and has been involved in projects such as the £8M fit out of The Loft Apartments at Manhattan Loft Garden’s in Stratford and the £34M Ebury Centre Development in Westminster.

In the eastern region Mirja has been involved in the development of a masterplan for a new sustainable community in Rackheath providing 200 new homes, and proposals for a small scale high quality sustainable residential development in Dickleburgh.

Matt joined LSI as a trainee Architectural Technologist in 2003, since then predominantly working on projects in the education sector which has formed a large percentage of the practice’s work.

Matt has undertaken the role of project runner on a number of successful projects in the education sector including UTC’s in Norfolk, Peterborough and Dagenham and the RIBA East Award winning Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge.

Outside of the education sector, Matt has delivered a new bioscience research and development facility for Leaf Systems on Norwich Research Park and Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Cley Marshes Visitor Centre.

Matt is currently delivering an £8M Integrated Health Centre in Kent and a £20M office development in Suffolk.

Foster Coldstores has launched Duet+, a new low noise condenser for their coldrooms, which is up to 42% quieter than the previous range.

The unit benefits from a sleek modern design as well as a host of improved engineering features.

The Duet+ condenser is almost 30% more energy efficient than the previous condenser, the Duet, and could save customers up to £443 per year.

“We have seen a rise in the requirement for low noise condensing units from a host of customers whose premises could be located close to noise sensitive properties, along with requests for low energy equipment from within our customer base,” said Samuel Devitt, Commercial Sales Manager for Foster Coldstores.

“The new unit has been designed with reliability at the heart of its design, allowing customers to focus on the running of their business with peace of mind, with full technical information available on request.”

The Duet+ comes in varying specifications all direct from their manufacturing facility in King’s Lynn. Options include housed/unhoused, high ambient, and low energy. All options come with low energy evaporators and intelligent control systems as standard.

Foster Refrigerator is Europe’s leading commercial refrigeration manufacturer, and with Gamko, are part of the ITW group of companies.  Foster has been designing and manufacturing its products in Britain for over 50 years and prides itself in providing outstanding products with market leading innovation, quality, reliability, energy-efficiency and customer service. Foster is a multi-award-winning company, and proudly carries the Royal Warrant in the UK. 

www.fosterrefrigerator.com

Gamko are global leaders in the manufacture of professional drinks coolers for the bar, leisure and catering industries.  Since 1958, products have continued to deliver a unique blend of inventive spirit and precision engineering to customers across the world, revolutionising the professional drinks cooling industry.  Providing support from concept to installation, Gamko are the experts in professional drinks cooling – have your bar the way your business needs it

www.gamko.com

We are delighted to be working with All Purpose Loans, continuing our work with loan comparison sites and lenders and helping them get to the top of Google through SEO (search engine optimisation). Following our success with other similar sites such as One Stop and MY JAR, we are in the process of implementing a number of techniques to help the site rank organically on Google for a number of key terms (not using the paid ads) and helping the company grow in terms of visitors to the site, applications made, funded and revenue generated. Here is the approach we have taken below:

Keyword Research

Every campaign starts with a conversation or sit down with the client to determine the list of keywords they wish to target. It is important that we include variations, so not only personal loans, but also online, compare, UK, bad credit – to cover the full spectrum of enquiries. In addition, it is essential that we get feedback, since this showed that words relating to loans calculator were very popular and therefore it is important to include a calculator option and example on every page too.

Content Creation

Based on the keywords, our next task is to create a content landing page for every set of keywords. The idea is that you create one page for Google to focus its attention on, per keyword. So it is best to have one page about business loans, not 5 or 10, and to focus your efforts on this main page. If you create other landing pages and guides relating to business loans, it is always healthy to then use an internal link back to your main page.

Beyond the product landing pages, we will be writing key guides about the loan products available, making the content as specific as possible to answering key problems that customers deal with – rather than writing generic blog content.

Link Building

Still a key part to the SEO marketing mix is getting links to the site. Our approach is to acquire paid links from very specific, good-quality business/loans/finance sites and also gain natural links through outreach, PR and creating sufficiently useful guides that they naturally pick up traction.

Technical Fix-Ups

Every month, we make it our priority to ensure that the site is optimised from a technical standpoint. This includes making sure every meta-title, tag, description, heading (h1,h2,h3), internal link, sitemap, image alt text and robot txt is well optimised to ensure a smooth crawling and indexing of the website.

We are delighted to see some initial progress for our clients at All Purpose Loans and are expecting some impressive results when we reach the 3-6 month mark, which is expected for SEO.

Innovate UK Smart Grants for Game-changing or Disruptive R&D – New Round Open

The Innovate UK (IUK) Smart Grants provide an opportunity for businesses and research and technology organisations to apply for a grants to deliver ambitious or disruptive R&D innovations with significant potential for impact on the UK economy. Smart is the new name for IUK’s ‘Open grant funding’ programme.

The competition provides funding for innovation research and development (R&D) from feasibility (including market research), through to technology or prototype testing and development stages up to (but not including) commercialisation.

IUK has allocated up to £25 million to fund a number of innovation projects in this competition. For projects with a duration of between 6 and 18 months, the total eligible project costs will be between £25,000 and £500,000 (single company or collaboration). For those with a duration between 19 and 36 months, the total eligible project costs will be between £25,000 and £2 million (collaboration only).

IUK may consider eligible project costs over £2 million (but not exceeding £3 million).

All proposals must be business focused, rather than pure research. Applications can come from any area of technology (including arts, design, media or creative industries), science or engineering and be applied to any part of the economy.

To lead a project, the applicant must be a UK-based business of any size or a research and technology organisation (RTO). The project must be carried out in the UK. If collaborating with others, the application must include an SME. To work alone, the applicant must be an SME. Proposals from innovation-based businesses with significant ambition and potential for growth or scale-up are welcomed. Collaborators can be UK based businesses, academic organisations, charities, public sector organisations or RTOs.

The competition is open until midday on 24 July 2019.

Further information can be found by following the links: 

• Innovate UK (IUK)
• Innovate UK Smart Grants: April 2019

The EIT Digital Challenge is an annual Europe-wide call for the most innovative start-ups in digital technology ready to scale up. It is provided through EIT Digital- a European digital innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation.

EU-based start-ups can apply with their innovative digital technologies in one of the following five categories:

• Digital Industry
• Digital Cities
• Digital Wellbeing
• Digital Infrastructure
• Digital Finance

The Challenge offers an international growth package worth up to €100,000 to scale up businesses. In total, 25 scale-ups from the five categories will be selected to pitch their product or service in front of an international jury of corporates and investors at the final event in October. The two best companies per category will gain 12 months in the EIT Digital Accelerator worth €50,000 to scale up their business. On top of that, the first prize winner in each category receives a cash prize of €50,000.

Applicants should:

• Be a fast-growing European technology start-up ready to scale.
• Have a product / service leverage digital technology applied to industry, cities, wellbeing, infrastructure or finance.
• Already have market traction, customers and revenue.
• Be growing at a double-digit pace or faster.
• Require support in international customer acquisition and fundraising.

The 2019 programme closes on 14 June 2019.

Further information can be found by following the link:  2019 EIT Digital Challenge Fund

Staff at local accountancy firm Aston Shaw have raised a grand total of £5,796.68 for Norfolk’s cancer charity, Big C.

Dominic Shaw, Director of Aston Shaw was delighted to present Dr Chris Bushby, Chief Executive of Big C with a cheque for £5,796.68 raised through a variety of fundraising events.

Over the course of the year the staff at Aston Shaw have a taken part in a range of fundraising activities, including a Colour 5k, Inflatable 5k, Dress Down Days, Networking Events, a Charity Pub Quiz and a Sponsored Silence by Aston Shaw’s ‘most talkative employee’.

Dominic Shaw, Director, said: “It’s a real pleasure to be able to donate such a sizeable sum of money to Big C, we’ve had a lot of fun raising it and we know that it’s going to a very worthwhile cause.”

Dr Chris Bushby, Chief Executive of Big C, said: “We rely on voluntary donations for the majority of our income, so support from local businesses is really important. We’d like to say a massive thank you to Aston Shaw for choosing us as their charity for the last year. It’s been a brilliant year working with the whole of the Aston Shaw team.”

Aston Shaw’s new charity of the year is East Anglian Air Ambulance, a life-saving charity delivering critical care to seriously ill or injured people in the region. Aston Shaw has stated that they aim to beat last year’s total and are aiming to raise £7,000.

www.astonshaw.co.uk

Sleep tight even when it’s light, with our May Blackout Blinds offer.

Blackout blinds come in a range of fabric designs so you can get a great night’s sleep without compromising on design. Save 20% when you order in May.   Book your home appointment in time for us to measure up and get a quote to you.   Free measuring and fitting service.    BOOK HERE   Please mention this offer when we visit to quote for your blinds.   Offer applies to domestic blinds ordered by 31st May 2019. One offer per household. Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other discount.

The 2019 winners of the MHA Larking Gowen City of Norwich Half Marathon Business Challenge have been presented with their first place cup on location with the East Anglian Air Ambulance. 

East Anglian Air Ambulance is the charity partner for this year’s race.  The presentation took place at the charity’s Norwich base at Norwich International Airport, giving the winners and runners-up the opportunity to take a look inside one of its air ambulances. 

This year’s winners, MHA Larking Gowen, crossed the finish line in a combined team time of 4 hours 31 minutes, just over 8 minutes ahead of last year’s winners, Barratt & Cooke. Worley Parsons’ team crossed the line in third place.

Jo Fox, Director at MHA Larking Gowen, comments:

“What a fantastic location to be able to present the awards to this year’s Business Challenge runners.  We enjoyed a great insight into the day-to-day running of the service and would like to thank East Anglian Air Ambulance for hosting the presentation, they were such a great cause to run for! I would also like to congratulate all the runners who took part this year, and thank the runners, organisers and volunteers for once again making this event so successful.”

On Sunday 7 April, just under 2,000 runners took part in the MHA Larking Gowen City of Norwich Half Marathon.  Thirteen teams entered the Business Challenge, an inter-company ‘best time’ competition held within the main race. If you would like to know more about East Anglian Air Ambulance or make a donation please visit www.eaaa.org.uk

Top 3 places of 13 teams

Company

Collective Time

1

MHA Larking Gowen

04:31:01

2

Barratt & Cooke A team

04:39:26

3

WorleyParsons

04:50:52

Photo; (Left to right) Captain Steve Norris, Director of Operations Matthew Jones, Critical Care Paramedic Rod Wells, Doctor Natalie Lonsdale of the East Anglian Air Ambulance and Jo Fox, Director at MHA Larking Gowen (centre) with the winning team members Adam Pearce, Tim Angell and Chris Yeates. 

Norfolk Clubhouse is part of a worldwide network of enterprises that exist to provide support and opportunities to people living with mental health conditions. Its purpose is to promote positive mental health for people aged 16 or over who live with severe, and often enduring, mental health problems.

It aims to enable people to regain the confidence and skills necessary to lead productive and satisfying lives. In addition, the Clubhouse offers its members a wide range of volunteering opportunities, access to education & employment, crisis support, information and signposting to other local organisations.

If you are interested in becoming a founding member of the social enterprise, please click the Trustee Information Pack link.

Trustee Pack

Name of contact: June Webb, Founder. Tel:07935072726 Email: info@norfolk-clubhouse.org Website: www.norfolk-clubhouse.org

Three of the Maids Head Hotel’s team, Jonathan Brasnett, Andrew Shorthose and Rose Taylor ran the City of Norwich Half Marathon on 8 April and raised £188 in sponsorship for our charity of the year, Break. The sponsorship has been matched by the hotel, making a grand total of £376.

Sarah Bunn, Break’s Fundraising Event Manager, joined us for Vision and Values Awards event on 23 April and presented certificates of appreciation and VIP supporter’s badges to our running team.

Paul Dickson, the hotel’s resident tour guide, was also presented with a VIP supporter’s badge for raising £147 for Break, comprising donations given at the end of his Shardlake’s Norwich tours, during English Tourism Week.

The Maids Head was also pleased to provide the venue for Break’s fundraising Prom Nation Pick a Dress event on April 11.

Break makes life better for vulnerable young people in East Anglia. The charity believes that every child and young person needs a home where they feel safe and loved, so they can grow in confidence and look to the future with hope. Break’s vision is to ensure children, young people and families reach their full potential and shape their own futures in a safe and creative environment.

The beautiful setting of Centre Parcs in Woburn was the venue this year for three days of networking, workshops, best practice, entertainment and relaxation.

In the natural surroundings of Woburn Forest, this year’s conference had an informal look and feel. More time was built in to enable franchisees and their staff and families to enjoy the facilities and rejuvenate in between a day of meeting TaxAssist partners at an exhibition on Friday, before a busy day of attending workshops and audio pods on Saturday, rounded off by a party in the evening.

Designed to inspire and energise franchisees, Saturday’s series of events were designed to cover a range of forward-thinking strategies and ideas to improve practices. Topics covered included winning business through technology, making the most of the software estate, Making Tax Digital, tax planning, cyber security and driving local marketing.

Saturday evening was a chance for attendees to enjoy themselves at an enchanted forest themed party, with entertainment provided by dance troupe ‘LED Dancers’ and internationally renowned ‘Urban Soul Orchestra’.

Group Operations Director Sarah Robertson was thrilled with the event: “While the location and format were new, there was still everything franchisees have come to expect from our flagship event and much more. It was fantastic to catch up with so many franchisees and share an enjoyable and informative weekend together.”

Franchisees and their staff were full of praise for the event.

Luiza Polec, Senior Accountant and Practice Manager at Pudsey and Horsforth TaxAssist Accountants, said: “The set up and entertainment on Saturday evening was spectacular, so far the best most of us have seen! Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were informative, refreshing and we loved the relaxed atmosphere.” Aberdeen based Steven Mearns concurs, adding: “I just wanted to say a huge ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ to the team for the amazing Conference weekend.

“Being our first Conference, Cameron [Allan] and I weren’t sure what to expect but the event really delivered. The highest compliment I can give is that we have already decided that regardless of the cost and logistics we will bring our whole team to the next one as we can now see the value it will add.”