Interior design, fit-out & furniture specialist expands Yorkshire reach with new hire
Leeds firm’s free glass recycling service to raise thousands of pounds for good causes
A Morley company which manufactures integral blinds for doors and windows is offering window installers in the Leeds and Bradford areas the opportunity to save money through a free waste glass collection and recycling service, and raise thousands of pounds for good causes in the process.
Morley Glass has been collecting old glass units that its customers remove during replacement work for two years. The company crushes these ‘post-consumer’ double glazed units into what is known as cullet, which is then sent to glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain to make new window glass at its Eggborough factory.
It is now extending this post consumer glass collection and recycling service – free of charge – to window and door installers in the local area, regardless of whether they are a Morley Glass customer or not, to boost the amount of glass that is being recycled.
As the crushed glass is such a high quality raw material for making new glass, Morley Glass generates money from its sale to the manufacturer. Every penny raised from this goes into a fund called GreenVision which provides grants of £500 to local charities, groups and individuals who are working to deliver environmental or social benefits in their communities.
The GreenVision fund has supported a wide variety of projects to date, ranging from the volunteers behind Halton in Bloom to dancing scholarships at a Castleford dance academy. But Morley Glass is hoping to attract many more people to apply for grants as awareness of the fund grows.
Ian Short, Managing Director of Morley Glass, said: “If you are a window and door installer in the Leeds and Bradford area, we want your old double glazed units! We should be able to provide a free collection service to most people so please get in touch if you are interested.
“It may surprise most people to learn that the vast majority of glass removed when windows and doors are being replaced is not being recycled properly. Often it either ends up in landfill or in low-grade uses like road building which is a terrible waste given that much of it is of such high quality that it can now be crushed and remanufactured into high quality new glass thanks to the technology and processes that Saint-Gobain Glass have developed.
“And most window installers are spending hundreds or even thousands of pounds every year to dispose of their old double glazed units. They don’t need to incur this cost – our service helps installers cut their waste disposal costs and improve their bottom line.”
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Leeds business scores partnership to spearhead drone innovation in Premier League refereeing
A Leeds-based business has secured a unique partnership with the PGMOL, to spearhead the use of drone technology within top Premier League football referee training programmes, to coincide with the kick-off of the new season.
Drone provider, Coptrz is working with the PGMOL, the body responsible for the management and development of officials in English professional football, to implement drones within practical-based programmes benefitting top referees such as Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor.
The core aim is to widen the training and development of officials in professional football by building on the current video analysis provision offered to both referees and assistant referees.
PGMOL recently opened the doors of its pre-season training camp at Loughborough to show how it is harnessing Coptrz’s drone technology to enhance match officials’ coaching programme.
Using both the DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise, and the DJI M30 drones, PGMOL can capture game-realistic situations from a bird’s eye perspective during its regular training camps; footage of which is then analysed in real time and off the pitch to help referees and assistant referees, and their coaches, work on different aspects of their game. In particular, this focuses on positioning and improving sight lines to gain the optimum angle to make decisions during games.
George Burne, business development director at Coptrz, based in Leeds, said: “Teaming up with the PGMOL is a key milestone for Coptrz as a business and will really demonstrate the positive impact drone technology can have at the highest level of the professional game.
“We look forward to working with PGMOL to provide referees and assistant referees in football with even greater analysis within their regular training scenarios.”
Adam Carter, head of performance analysis at PGMOL, said: “The use of technology in sport is constantly evolving and we are committed to ensuring we remain at the cutting edge of innovation.
“The introduction of drones into our training programme has meant that we can now capture game scenarios from a new and beneficial viewpoint, which is playing an important part in preparing our officials for their fixtures both at home and across the world.
“There’s been a lot of investment into the coaching structure at PGMOL in recent months and this technology is another positive step to continuing to provide officials with the best possible tools to perform on matchdays.”
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NHS names new Chief Exec for trusts north and south of the Humber
Today Jonathan Lofthouse has taken up the role of Group Chief Executive at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust.
Formerly site Chief Executive as part of King’s College Hospitals, Mr Lofthouse will oversee the management of both organisations. As well as five hospitals – Hull Royal Infirmary, Castle Hill Hospital, Diana Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby, Scunthorpe General and Goole – he will be responsible for some community services on the south bank of the Humber. He has previously held the position of Director of Improvement at Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. HUTH and NLaG will continue to be two separate organisations although they will, in future, share an executive team. While the two organisations already collaborate closely in the delivery of many key hospitals services, the appointment of Jonathan Lofthouse is the most significant step in enabling them to work more effectively on shared regional challenges. Mr Lofthouse said:“We all know how busy NHS services are and how much pressure services are under. We also know that following the pandemic many of the demands we are now experiencing across our hospitals and community services are really challenging and difficult to respond to. That’s true across all our north and south bank hospitals. We have emergency pressures, challenges in discharging patients and too many patients who have been waiting far longer than we would desire for our care, whether that be surgery, diagnostic or therapeutic. “Now is the time for us to act creatively and courageously and innovate, focusing all of our efforts on making things better for patients and for staff. Through a group operating model we get to do that on a far bigger scale, and the power of that collective focus, the effect of coming together, I believe will allow us to create stronger, higher quality, better functioning services for our patients, and create more opportunities for our 17,000 staff.”Rising debt and inflation fuel surge of Yorkshire businesses in financial distress
Yorkshire businesses are facing a growing burden of escalating economic pressures including rising interest rates and higher labour and materials costs, according to the latest Red Flag Alert data from independent business rescue and recovery specialist Begbies Traynor.
The report found that 29,261 businesses in Yorkshire were suffering early or ‘significant’ distress in Q2 2023, an 8% increase on the same period in 2022 and up 4.9% on the first quarter of this year. ‘Significant’ distress refers to businesses showing deterioration in key financial ratios and indicators including those measuring working capital, contingent liabilities, retained profits and net worth.
Across the UK, ‘significant’ distress was up by 8.5% in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, with a total of 438,702 businesses affected. The three sectors most severely affected by financial distress nationally were support services, construction and real estate and property services.
The latest data is sourced from a completely new Red Flag dataset that has involved deep dive analysis of eight years’ company data by data scientists over the past two years to track key factors behind company distress and failure rates.
Of the 22 sectors monitored by Red Flag Alert, in Yorkshire nine reported increases of over 10% in the number of companies in significant financial distress compared with a year ago. Sectors suffering the biggest increases in significant distress in the region, compared to last year, included sport and health clubs (16.7%), property businesses (14.2%) and retailers (14.6%) which accounted for 21% of this distress (6,074 businesses). Other sectors which saw escalating early distress were health and education (13.4%) and media (11.3%).
Julian Pitts, regional managing partner for Begbies Traynor in Yorkshire, said: “Higher interest rates have hit both consumers and businesses hard and there are mounting concerns that the situation may become worse in the second half of this year in Yorkshire and across the UK, when winter sets in and energy costs go up.
“Consumers are feeling the pinch and cutting back not just on discretionary spending but also on essentials to counteract higher mortgage and loan repayments. Meanwhile businesses are also seeing the cost of their debt rising and, still reeling from the effects of the pandemic and set back by higher energy bills and the effects of the war in Ukraine, it’s no wonder that the number of distressed companies has jumped since last year.
“Given the wider economic uncertainty we fear that time is simply running out for many businesses and we expect a surge in company collapses with the likely failure of many ‘zombie businesses’ in the coming months.”
He added: “Our advice to businesses is to monitor their financial position carefully and seek advice from qualified restructuring professionals as soon as any problems become apparent to avoid them escalating.”
