Category Archives: Regional News

Commercial Property, Commercial Property News, Construction News, Liverpool, North of England

Winvic and Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited Celebrate Groundbreaking at Former Rolls Royce Site in Liverpool

March 25, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Winvic Construction Ltd, a leading main contractor that specialises in the design and delivery of private and public construction and civil engineering projects has won a £35.8 million contract to design and construct four warehouse facilities at Atlantic Park in Bootle, Liverpool for Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited. The companies celebrated the start of the 41-week programme at a groundbreaking event.

Atlantic Park is 52-acres and is the former site of the Rolls Royce Engineering Works Factory and other industrial and commercial buildings. Winvic will first be excavating existing concrete slabs and preparing the ground for construction. The four industrial warehouse units are 40,000 sq ft, 50,000 sq ft, 110,000 sq ft and 125,000 sq ft and each will comprise two-storey office space.

The scheme has been designed in accordance with Royal London’s Sustainability Strategy, which aims for new build property developments to achieve Net Zero by 2030. Winvic will be delivering the project as Net Zero Carbon in Construction and employing its tried and tested Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) process, which is aligned with the UKGBC and LETI, and third-party verified. As part of the design strategy, 30 per cent GGBS will replace in situ concrete, 98 per cent recycled scrap metal will be utilised in the reinforcement steel and water recycling will reduce mains water use by 40 per cent compared to the BREEAM target.

Photo caption: CGI of Atlantic Park

BREEAM Excellent and an EPC A rating is being targeted and the project will deliver a 10 per cent biodiversity net gain; bird, bat and insect nest boxes will also be installed. The project delivery also includes the installation of new services, separate concrete service yards an access road and all hard and soft landscaping. 20 per cent of the car parking spaces will be enabled for electric vehicles.

In line with Winvic’s commitment to leaving a positive legacy in communities local to projects and S106 requirements, the contractor has developed an Employment and Skills Plan. Winvic will continue to work closely with Sefton@work and InvestSefton – as well as its supply chain partners – to match employment and training opportunities with people from the local area and collaborate with local education providers to provide career talks and work experience placements.

Representatives from Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited, Gardiner & Theobald and Winvic Construction Ltd

Danny Nelson, Winvic’s Head of Industrial, Distribution and Logistics, commented: “We’re delighted to have impressed the Royal London team during the tender process and are ready to deliver four industrial facilities as Net Zero in construction for our new client. I’d like to thank them so far for a great start. Our social value team has also begun planning and will be using their collaborative skills to bring benefits to local people. The site isn’t without its challenges due its former use, but we have successfully remediated the ground on numerous projects and are confident to deliver the scheme by the end of 2024.”

Matthew Barnes, Senior Asset Manager from Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited, added: “We are pleased to be partnering with Winvic to deliver the next important phase of the Atlantic Park master plan, bringing much needed employment and economic growth to the northwest region. The scheme will showcase Royal London’s commitment to its sustainability principles and its ambition to create real long-term investment value for its members.”

For more information on Winvic, the company’s latest project news and job vacancies please visit www.winvic.co.uk. Join Winvic on social media – visit X (formerly Twitter) @WinvicLtd – and LinkedIn.

Header image caption:

CGI of Atlantic Park

Menopause, Menopause at work, News, Scotland

Glasgow Clyde College is awarded the Menopause Friendly Accreditation

March 20, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Glasgow Clyde College – one of the largest Further Education providers in Scotland with three campuses at Anniesland, Cardonald and Langside – is the first college in Scotland to be awarded The Menopause Friendly Accreditation.

Being menopause friendly is important to Glasgow Clyde College (GCC) as it supports employee wellbeing during a significant life transition that brings many changes for its colleagues. Over 60% of its staff are women, with 50% of those over the age of 50. As menopause affects such a significant number of people, GCC wanted to do all it could to support and retain its valuable talent and the experience they bring.

The Menopause Friendly Accreditation, established by Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace, recognises high standards and proven practices that embrace menopause in the workplace. To achieve The Menopause Friendly Accreditation, employers are assessed by an independent panel and must demonstrate evidence of their effectiveness in six key areas: culture, policies and practices, training, engagement, facilities and evaluation.

Three things of which the Glasgow Clyde College menopause friendly team are most proud in terms of the changes that have been implemented are:

Providing menopause training for all managers to make managers aware of signs and symptoms of menopause to encourage open and supportive discussions with their staff.
Establishing a monthly Menopause Forum where staff can chat freely and ask questions from others experiencing or affected by menopause.
Creating a more open and honest culture to help normalise menopause as a normal stage in life by showcasing stories and experiences of staff who are thriving and embracing life during and after menopause.

Lorraine McGaw, Assistant Principal: Human Resources at GCC, said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded the Menopause Friendly Accreditation. Going through menopause can be a really challenging experience for many women, and it’s important that employers recognise this, raise awareness amongst colleagues and and offer support where possible.

“Being a menopause friendly employer means that we provide a welcoming working environment that allows women to bring their best selves to work. By actively supporting staff, listening to feedback, investing in training and putting practices in place that normalise menopause, we’ve created an open and honest culture where staff feel empowered and valued. It has very much been a team effort, and to be recognised with this accreditation is fantastic.”

Achieving The Menopause Friendly Accreditation helps show that Glasgow Clyde College will continue to foster an inclusive culture and promote employee wellbeing. “When people feel supported, they are more likely to feel valued and respected, leading to improved mental health, job satisfaction and engagement,” explains Lorraine, who also has this advice for other organisations wanting to get started on becoming menopause friendly.

Do your homework! We liaised closely with Henpicked: Menopause In the Workplace and accessed their resources to guide our training and support
Create a bespoke menopause policy to highlight your commitment and support.
Conduct a staff survey to measure and gauge the level of understanding, support and commitment that is currently in place and what else needs to be done.

“Glasgow Clyde College impressed our independent panel with its dedication to supporting every member of the college’s workforce through life’s transitions, ensuring they feel valued, understood and empowered,” says Deborah Garlick, CEO and Founder of Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace. “Their approach has created a supportive and inclusive working culture which nurtures good health, wellbeing and inclusivity.”

News, North of England

Retirement beckons for Neil after 42 years at EDM

March 19, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

A senior project manager who has worked on assignments from fighter jets and luxury cars to interactive exhibits at children’s museums is retiring after nearly 42 years at Manchester-based engineering and manufacturing company EDM.

Neil Bottomley, 64, joined EDM as a pattern maker in May 1982 after serving a three-year apprenticeship at J.J. Harvey in Denton, Greater Manchester.

He progressed through the company’s ranks working on subsea, rail, automotive, marine, museum and defence projects which took him around the world to countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Spain, Norway and the United States as well as throughout the British Isles.

In his role as senior project manager, he leads EDM’s integrated project team for the defence sector. He will officially retire at the end of March.

Neil is the longest-serving member of staff at EDM, but not far behind him are production supervisors Graham Hill and Nigel Southworth and fitter Glen Shepley, who all joined the company in 1983.

EDM manufactures and assembles training simulators for clients in sectors including civil aviation, defence and rail. It is based at a 100,000sq ft site in Newton Heath, where it also operates an aviation training academy. The group has 200 staff.

When Neil joined EDM it was based in Failsworth, Oldham, then as it expanded the business moved to nearby Hollinwood before relocating to its current site.

He said: “My first job at EDM was to work on a clay wind tunnel model for the Jaguar XJ40.

“I’ve been involved in many developments over the years, but the standout projects for me were working with renowned designer Harris Mann on the layout of a train cab interior, producing interactive exhibits for the Imaginosity museum in Dublin, full-size Eurofighter Typhoon mock-ups for air shows and, similarly and most recently, one for the BAE Systems Tempest next generation fighter aircraft.

“Every job has been different and interesting, and I’ve loved the variety.

“EDM is a great place to work. I’ll miss the people here – everyone is really friendly and there is a good atmosphere.

“The best part of the job has been working with great colleagues and customers to produce fantastic products which are still in use after many years. It’s also been immensely rewarding seeing younger members of staff progress their careers.

“One of the founding directors and chairman of the company, Ron Yule, said at his retirement that, to allow the company to grow, we the employees needed to grow with it and embrace the diversity and developments of the business. His words remain so poignant 32 years on.

“I’ve seen many young people come into EDM and have worked with them to help bring them to the fore of the business by developing their skills and encouraging them to the stage where they’ve been ready to take the lead on projects.”

He added: “It’s a good career because there are elements of design, creativity and building something of lasting value, as well as learning a special set of skills. I’d certainly encourage the next generation to follow in my footsteps.”

Neil has been married to Kath, a legal secretary, for nearly 42 years. The couple live in Ramsbottom and have two daughters and three grandchildren.

He plans to uses his retirement to pursue his hobbies of collecting and selling antiques and football and music memorabilia, as well as gardening, DIY and spending more time with his family.

Tony Bermingham, managing director of EDM, said: “Neil has been a loyal, dedicated and hard-working employee of the company for the last 42 years. It’s been a pleasure working alongside him for 28 of those years since I joined the business, and all the directors and employees wish him a long, healthy and happy retirement.”

News, Scotland

Slough and Aberdeen councils top the table for slashing playground spend

March 19, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Slough and Aberdeenshire councils are the local authorities to have made the biggest cuts to spending on playgrounds in the past five years – slashing funding by 150 per cent, a new report has found.

The Play Gap Report, commissioned by ESP Play, has revealed a postcode lottery meaning children in some parts of the country have little access to high quality outdoor play.

Data gathered from Freedom of Information requests showed that some councils had made significant cuts to spending, with councils in Slough (156 per cent) and Aberdeenshire (149 per cent) the top two.

Glasgow came in third with a 102 per cent cut with the London boroughs of Bexley and Hillingdon finishing the top five with 116 per cent and 98 per cent respectively.

The cities of York and Manchester had made cuts of 84 per cent and 73 per cent with another London borough, Richmond, reducing its spend by 70 per cent up to 2023.

Finishing up the top ten were Hartlepool with a 59 per cent drop and Gateshead who made cuts of 53 per cent over the five-year period.

The report also showed disparities between regions, and found that average annual council spending on playgrounds varied wildly – from more than £600,000 in Yorkshire and Humberside – to £197,000 in the North East.

East Midlands and West Midlands, South West and North West made up the rest of the bottom half of the table.

The report concluded that the lack of outdoor play provision can be detrimental to childrens’ mental and physical health and that government, councils and developers all need to do more to ensure that safe, high quality playgrounds are available for children.

Andrew Wood, from playground specialist ESP Play, said: “Ensuring equitable access to quality play spaces is crucial for nurturing healthy, resilient communities. We have long campaigned for more funding for play spaces as we know how vital they are for the health and development of children.

“We are calling on the government, local authorities and property developers to pay more attention to this essential part of the lives of our young people and to commit to making comparatively small changes to make a huge difference to the lives of children.”

Professor Helen Dodd, of Play England, said: “Children who spend more time playing, especially outdoors and adventurously, have better mental health and are more physically active.

“Children’s play opportunities are affected by the environments around them, with some environments facilitating active, adventurous, engaged play, and others discouraging play.

“It is therefore really important that children have access to places that support their play such as playgrounds.”

Top 10 councils with the biggest fall in spending

Rank	Council	Region	%age drop in spend on playgrounds in the past 5 years
1	Slough	South East	156%
2	Aberdeenshire	Scotland	149%
3	Glasgow	Scotland	102%
4	Bexley	Greater London	116%
5	Hillingdon Borough Council	Greater London	98%
6	York	Yorkshire and the Humber	84%
7	Manchester	North West	73%
8	Richmond	Greater London	70%
9	Hartlepool	North East	59%
10	Gateshead	North East	53%

Average Annual Council Spend on Playgrounds

Rank	Region	Average annual spend
1	Yorkshire and Humberside	£671,643
2	Scotland	£565,971
3	South East	£554, 296
4	East of England	£475,398
5	London	£391,166
6	West Midlands	£282,686
7	South West	£270,484
8	East Midlands	£2224,193
9	North West	£202, 405
10	North East	£197,948

Finance and Banking, News, North of England

Clear Start Announces New Investment in Monthly Budgeting Service

March 14, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Manchester-based Clear Start is celebrating significant investment in its pioneering Personal Monthly Budgeting Service, as it launches version three of its highly pioneering app, cementing its position as the consumer champion in offering real time, unbiased advice on the cheapest deals in a customer’s area, irrespective of any commission fees.

The latest version draws on state-of-the-art programming, to source the very best prices, which are now updated every hour and with the added functionality of push notifications ‘as it happens’ to ensure customers are accessing the most competitive deals..

Just as prices at the fuel pumps rise steeply, and with big differences in the cost per litre often within a few mile radius, the newest version of the app sends alerts on the cheapest five fuel stations in your locality, drawing on postcode data, as well finding the very best prices for your weekly food basket, top insurance deals and broadband providers.

The updated platform also alerts customers via instant push notifications if they go over their monthly budget, helping them to keep control of costs, so everyday living expenses don’t spiral.

Fiaz Ashraf, CEO of Clear Start Accountants and Founder of the Clear Start Monthly Budgeting Service comments: “For our customers the budgeting app is a lifeline, allowing us to do the hard work for them, in advising how they can save on everyday necessities. Our significant investment in the latest version now takes this one step further, with customised price data supplied in real time to offer the very best deals close to their homes.

“This latest move proves our commitment to harnessing the very latest technology to improve our capability, and hence our customer service offering on an on-going basis.”

Clear Start has its own podcast ‘Penny to the Pound’, co-hosted by Clear Start’s Founder and CEO Fiaz Ashraf, which teams up with experts and industry leaders across the series to offer their views for those embarking on a journey to financial freedom.

Penny to the Pound explores and demystifies in an easy-to-listen format relevant topics such as personal budgeting, household expenses, individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) and debt relief orders.

The podcast is now available to listen to on all major platforms, and can be viewed on the Clear Start Accountants Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearStartAccountants

Charity & CSR, South West, South West England News, Tech, Technology, Wiltshire News

Mintivo contract with Wiltshire Air Ambulance gets lift off

March 8, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

WILTSHIRE Air Ambulance (WAA) has signed a five year deal with Wiltshire IT services and solutions expert Mintivo to be its strategic IT partner.

The charity, which provides a lifesaving helicopter emergency medical service across Wiltshire, Bath and surrounding areas, said it was looking for a new IT partner to support its lifesaving service and that Mintivo was successful because it demonstrated a clear understanding of its needs. The Lacock company will be supporting the charity’s service with a 24/7 resilient and stable network as well as providing essential staff training.

Mintivo Commercial Director Alex Jukes said that as the Semington charity has no IT department of its own, his firm’s ability to cover every aspect of support, training and guidance on strategic development was key to its winning the contract.

“I think the key thing for them was working with a local business that aligned to their values and had expertise in the charity sector, and with the NHS,” he said.

“We’re able to provide that 24/7 capability, which is what they need because obviously they are working 365 days a year. If there is an issue with their network or systems they need to know that they’ve got a partner who is always available and understands the intricacies and nuances of how they operate, otherwise it might stop their pilots from being able to take off and at that point it could become a life or death scenario.

“So for them, it is really about having confidence in a provider with proven capability in the market, with values which align to theirs and a partner who sees them as a valuable customer.”

The charity needs to raise £4.5 million a year, the equivalent of more than £12,000 every day, to keep its Bell 429 helicopter in the air and critical care car on the road. During 2023 it was called to 1,167 missions, an average of three per day.

Mr Jukes said that as the charity is already forward thinking in its IT provision, part of Mintivo’s role will be to help it get more out of its technology to save staff time and money. “They run a slick operation generally anyway, and you’d expect them to because of that critical service element,” he said.

“From an IT point of view, they’re in a fairly good place and they just want to continue to leverage some of the technologies in their business better and maximiser their investment, particularly around Microsoft.

“A key thing for us to continually assess with our charity customers is how are we going to add value? How is technology going to allow it to do better fundraising, deliver better services? Can we create efficiencies from automation, or increase productivity through a better use of technology? Any money saved can potentially then can go back into the charity’s funds. So it’s all about using technology to gain more efficiencies.”

He said Mintivo, which was formed in 2018 and offers managed IT support, consultancy, cyber security and automation, will ensure its IT helpdesk is available online round the clock, while staff will be at the charity’s Semington base regularly to answer queries. “As with our other customers, our personal approach and attention to detail mean we are almost seen as ‘in house’ by clients,” he said.

WAA Director of Finance and Infrastructure Danielle Friend said: “When we undertook an exercise to tender for our IT services, the intention was not only to find a strategic partner who would look after the infrastructure and general IT requirements, but one who would assist in bringing innovative ideas to life. Being an IT partner is no longer about just setting up users and sending emails, especially as the Microsoft 365 applications have become such a powerful tool for change and advancement.

“We went through the tendering process as a team and Mintivo were the clear winners. We believe Mintivo will help us achieve our ambitious plans around data and automation, and very much look forward to working with them over the next five years.”

Mr Jukes said: “We are really proud to be working with a prestigious charity that is so well respected and loved across the county, and one that saves so many lives.”

Find out more about the charity at wiltshireairambulance.co.uk and about Mintivo’s services at Mintivo.co.uk.

—

Pictured: Wiltshire Air Ambulance doctor Reuben Cooper, left, pilot George Williams, Mintivo Commercial Director Alex Jukes, Service Director Jason Lovell and Operations Manager Hannah Saunders and Wiltshire Air Ambulance Finance Director Danielle Friend and Critical Care Paramedic Craig Wilkins with the charity’s Bell 429 helicopter

Pictured: Wiltshire Air Ambulance Critical Care Paramedic Craig Wilkins showing Mintivo’s team around the charity’s Bell 429 helicopter. Last year it and the charity’s critical care car were called to 1,167 missions, an average of three per day

News, Scotland, Tech, Technology

smartR AI co-operation with Edinburgh University EPCC and Cerebras

March 7, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Edinburgh, January 15^th 2024. smartR AI™ and EPCC, part of the University of Edinburgh, are partnering together on a super computer trial project using the Cerebras CS-2 Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) system.

EPCC is the UK’s leading centre of Supercomputing and Data Science expertise, pushing the boundaries of High-Performance Computing and Data Science research. In collaboration with smartR AI, a Scottish-based consultancy excelling and specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications of AI, EPCC set out to conduct an analysis of the real-world performance advantage that EPCC’s Wafer-Scale Engine CS-2 server can offer to local AI businesses. In response smartR AI set out to investigate generative AI capabilities within a business environment.

We conducted a comparison between two advanced hardware setups designed for optimized parallel computation. First, we examined the Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine CS-2 chip, notable for its colossal compute core scale with 850,000 AI-optimized cores. This chip addresses deep learning bottlenecks by efficiently utilizing its cores and 40 GB of on-chip memory, boasting an exceptional 20 PB/s memory bandwidth. Conversely, the smartR AI Alchemist server employing the Nvidia RTX 3090.

This head-to-head analysis sheds light on parallel computation possibilities, impacting the evolution of LLMs and deep learning applications. The results are staggering, with 10x faster training loss convergence of a GPT-2 model pre-training.

In this comparison experiment, we conducted pre-training on a version of the GPT-2 model. As the original OpenAI GPT2 paper uses, we employed an open version of WebText, OpenWebText, which is an open-source recreation of the WebText corpus. The text is web content extracted from URLs shared on Reddit with at least three upvotes. (38GB).

Thus far, running the sample models smartR AI has managed to train a model from scratch in under 1 hour on the EPCC system with the Cerebras CS-2 chip, compared to the massive 10 hours that it took to complete on their own internal system with an Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU. The company’s engineers working on this project are quite certain they will be able to utilize more of the resources available on EPCC’s Cerebras system to make further improvements to training speeds, and are excited to undertake a larger scale project to evaluate the limits of the system. The following graphic shows the results of smartR AI’s performance trial to date.

GPT Training on EPCC CS-2 server vs. internal server

Julien Sindt, Business Development Manager at EPCC, commented on the results of phase 1 of the project: “These impressive results from smartR AI give clear confirmation of our belief that the Cerebras CS-2 is a game-changer for training large language models. The Cerebras team has recently developed new upgrades for the system which we expect will enable training times to be reduced even further. We look forward to sharing these benefits with our partners.”

Oliver King-Smith, founder and CEO of smartR AI commented on the collaboration: “We are very fortunate to be able to work with EPCC on this important LLM and GPT related performance project, and look forward to the potential to incorporate other similar tests with, for example, the EPCC’s new Graphcore system.”

About EPCC, University of Edinburgh

Based in the University of Edinburgh.

EPCC provides supercomputing and data services to industry and academia. Since our inception in 1990, we have gained an impressive reputation for leading-edge capability in all aspects of high-performance computing (HPC), data science, and novel computing. This expertise is reinforced by deep ties with industry and academia.

With a strong track record of working with businesses, EPCC leverages their expertise and facilities to accelerate the adoption, and spread the benefits, of high-performance computing. They operate a remarkable collection of computing and data storage facilities at our Advanced Computing Facility, including hosting the UK National Supercomputing Services ARCHER2 and Cirrus, and have been chosen to host the UK’s first Exascale supercomputer. They are a leading provider of high-performance computing and data science education and training, and conduct research at the leading edge of these fields. http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk

smartR AI augments your team with AI expertise. Working closely with all stakeholders to drive enterprise-wide implementation of AI, the company streamlines workflows. Spending time to learn about your business and collaborate closely with your teams to develop a customized AI solution unique to you. The smartR team has years of experience adapting AI solutions to real world needs, developing proprietary model building blocks to accelerate the development of AI projects.

For business applications there’s SCOTi – your loyal AI pal.
For medical, health and wellbeing applications,there’s alertR – a behavioral intelligence-based alerting system.

They specialize in providing safe private models, that manage risk, while providing high reward. As these models are specifical trained for you, they work naturally with people to enhance and optimize productivity, and reveal previously unseen insights from your vast data pools. But most importantly, smartR AI is committed to providing safe AI programs within your own secure and private ecosystems. https://www.smartr.ai/

Climate Action, Climate Tech, Derbyshire, Energy, News, Scotland, Sustainability

Chancellor fails to ride the hydro wave to help cut carbon emissions and household bills

March 7, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

Government misses key opportunity to back a sustainable and reliable renewable energy source, as major new report shows hydropower helped slash £1.1billion off consumer bills

The Chancellor has missed a golden opportunity to support the UK’s strategic economic, employment and Net Zero ambitions by failing to fully back hydropower – a proven and reliable source of renewable energy for the future, says the British Hydropower Association (BHA).

The organisation has expressed its extreme disappointment at the lack of foresight and financial backing for hydropower in the Chancellor’s spring budget.

A new report by BiGGAR Economics, commissioned by the BHA and published today, estimates that in 2022 alone, the volume of hydropower produced in the UK reduced the wholesale cost of energy by £1.1 billion, equivalent to £38.50 per household.

There is currently around 2 gigawatts (GW) of traditional hydropower being utilised across the UK, excluding pumped storage hydro, and there is potential to develop and build an additional 1GW of new hydropower.

Kate Gilmartin, CEO of the British Hydropower Association, who recently gave evidence to both the Environmental Audit and Energy Security and Net Zero select committees, said: “It’s disappointing, frustrating and mystifying that the Chancellor has failed to ride a hydro wave which would help slash sky high consumer bills, create jobs, and help cut the UK’s carbon emissions.

“This was a golden opportunity to bring hydropower fully into the UK’s future, reliable, renewable energy mix and the government has failed to grasp it. As our new report from BiGGAR Economics shows, hydropower can help support the UK’s strategic ambitions, contribute to Net Zero, reduce reliance on energy imports and produce the most energy when demand is high, in winter.

“There’s still nothing in current government policy which brings forward renewable generation at anything less than five megawatts. Ministers are tunnel-focused on large scale generation connected at the transmission grid which doesn’t resolve local grid issues or enable local energy solutions that can really help reduce bills for consumers.”

Renovation of a water wheel at Cromford Mills, Derbyshire

The BiGGAR Economics report – “The Socio-economic impact of Hydropower in the UK” – suggests that building an additional 1GW of hydropower, via new small scale local hydro projects and upgrading existing facilities, would require £5.5 billion investment over 15 years, with £4.2 billion worth of contracts going to UK firms and the creation of 4,140 jobs.

It is estimated that the development and construction phase could support up to £2.3 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) across Scotland, £135 million GVA in Wales and £2.3 billion GVA across England.

Last month, the BHA published its manifesto ahead of the UK general election in order to persuade politicians of all parties to invest in hydropower as a crucial part of the UK’s future energy mix.

The BHA is calling for:

Policy support that will allow 1GW Hydropower deployment through changes to the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, including a strike price of £140/MWh.
A Hydropower CfD ring-fenced pot, in order to replace gas peaking plant.
An approach that moves to “Enhanced” Levelised Cost of Energy, which considers wider whole systems benefits.

You can read the BiGGAR Economics report in full on the BHA’s new website, here.

News, South East

London manufacturing SME Get It Made makes the FT1000 list

March 6, 2024 Lisa Baker, Editor, UK Business News

London-based SME manufacturing specialist Get It Made has been recognised as one of the FT1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies 2024 following the publication of this year’s list.

In the UK, the 723rd ranked company secured the fourth position as the fastest-growing manufacturer, a particularly noteworthy achievement considering the size and rapid expansion of the UK manufacturing sector. It also has significantly fewer employees per £000,000 of turnover, at £486,900 per employee, making it the most productive manufacturing company, which has grown organically since its inception in 2011, with zero venture capital investment. Resin manufacturer Vuba was placed 314th on the list, with a turnover of £289,147 per employee based on its 32-strong team (a total of £9,252,712), while the UK’s second fastest growing manufacturer on 2024’s FT1000 list was Fractory with £9,296,944 turnover, equating to £132,813 per head based on 70 employees.

The ranking highlights European companies that have achieved the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue in the three years to 2022. To be included in the 2024 FT1000, companies needed to have a minimum CAGR of 36.3%.

Luke Smoothy, Founder of Get It Made said: “Making it onto the FT1000 list is truly gratifying, as it reflects the remarkable commitment and effort put in by the team. This holds even more significance considering the challenges faced in 2020 and 2021 due to the strict COVID-19 restrictions. Despite the difficulties, our manufacturing work in London during that period presented us with unforeseen chances to address the significant gaps in supply chains across the UK through manufacturing services, including 3D printing, CNC machining and injection moulding.

“We’re enormously proud of the fact that Get It Made is the fourth fastest growing manufacturing company in the UK, as well as the most productive manufacturing business based on turnover per employee. Our success is testament to the team’s hard work, unwavering attention to detail and delivery of bespoke, high-quality outcomes to help us build a loyal and expanding client base. We feel privileged to work in an era of rapidly evolving innovation and technology which we’re able to harness to the benefit of our customers, driven by a simple ethos of providing simplified manufacturing processes while maintaining exceptional customer service.”

Each year, the Financial Times and research company Statista jointly identify the fastest growing companies across Europe by launching a public campaign and conducting supplementary research. The successful companies are then recognised in its annual edition of the FT1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies Special Report, and is public acknowledgment of firms’ fast, sustainable, and organic growth.

Get It Made is among 130 companies included in the list from the UK, which is the third most-represented country on the list. Italy holds the first position and maintains its lead, followed by Germany in second place. As reflected in the FT report, London continues to be a prominent growth hub, and Get It Made is one of the 69 companies based in the capital that have secured a spot on the list. This achievement contributes to London maintaining its lead for the eighth consecutive year.

Business in the News