ABP picks Spencer Group to help deliver national investment programme
Hull-based civil engineering and construction contractor Spencer Group has been appointed by Associated British Ports to be part of a major national investment programme.
The Group has been appointed to the Industrial Buildings Framework Contract to build large-scale industrial buildings for ABP in four out of five regions across the UK where the port owner operates – South East and North West England, Scotland and Wales.
The framework will run for five years, with scope to extend to a further two years, during which ABP plans to invest a significant value across the four regions with specific projects determined by port requirements in each location.
The success for Spencer Group’s industrial division follows an extensive competitive tendering selection process involving both regional and national contractors across the UK.
Spencer Group Off Site Construction Director Richard Green-Morgan, who leads the industrial division of the business, said: “This is a very significant contract for us and a positive continuation of our strong working relationship with ABP.
“Being appointed by ABP in each of these regions is further evidence of our excellent reputation as a leading provider of multi-disciplinary engineering and construction projects across the UK.
“It will also strengthen our presence and position these locations, undoubtedly creating opportunities to work with new partners and SMEs to jointly support ABP’s ambitious plans for the future.
“We’re looking forward to getting started and working with ABP on these important projects.”
Spencer Group MD Gary Thornton added: “Our appointment to the Industrial Buildings Frameworks Contract is very positive news for Spencer Group.
“The framework is yet another example of our developing relationship with ABP, which started over 30 years ago. Our ability to provide technical support, design and delivery capabilities to provide new and enhanced existing assets and infrastructure mean we are able to support ABP’s investment decisions and meet their customer demands.
“We’re proud of the faith shown in us by ABP and are looking forward to starting work under this new framework to deliver exceptional value to ABP and their customers.”
ABP is the UK’s leading ports group and its network of 21 ports supports 119,000 jobs and handles about a quarter of the UK’s seaborne trade, worth £150bn annually.
Government pledges revamp of Consumer Credit Act to help businesses
The government has pledged to reform the Consumer Credit Act – which regulates all credit card purchases and personal loans – cutting costs for businesses and simplifying rules for consumers.
In an announcement today it’s said a consultation on the direction of reform is expected to be published by the end of the year
The Consumer Credit Act, which came into force in 1974 and governs billions of credit card purchases and loans each year, is felt to be highly prescriptive and increasingly cumbersome and inflexible – confusing consumers and adding unnecessary costs to businesses when implementing its requirements.
The government will move much of the Act from statute to sit under the Financial Conduct Authority – enabling the regulator to quickly respond to emerging developments in the consumer credit market, rather than having to amend existing legislation. It will also simplify ambiguous technical terms to make clear to consumers what protections they have – and make it easier and more cost effective for businesses to comply with regulation.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen said: “The Consumer Credit Act has been in place for almost 50 years – and it needs to be reformed to keep pace with the modern world.
“We want to create a regulatory regime that fosters innovation but also maintains high levels of consumer protection. That’s why I have committed to undertake this ambitious long-term reform – and it’s exactly what I’ll deliver.”
Leaving the EU has provided additional opportunity for regulatory reform and the government will examine which parts of EU retained legislation can be repealed or replaced to ensure regulation is better suited to the needs of the British people.
The reforms will allow lenders to provide a wider range of finance whilst maintaining high levels of consumer protection. For example, we will ensure that the information a consumer receives throughout the lending process is easy to understand and will be both screen and print-friendly. We will also ensure that lenders are able to more easily provide credit for emerging and new technologies such as electric cars, helping millions of people embrace technological innovation.
The reforms will build on the recommendations of the Financial Conduct Authority’s retained provisions report and the Woolard Review – which both made recommendations for a reformed regime.
A consultation is expected to be published by the end of this year outlining the government’s proposals, and seeking views from stakeholders on how the Act should be reformed.
£80m investment programme gets underway at British Steel
British Steel has started work on £80 million of investments to enhance its product range and improve operational and environmental performance.
The bulk of the investment – £48 million – is financing the installation of a new billet caster at the company’s Scunthorpe site. At the same time, its Scunthorpe Rod Mill is being given a £32 million upgrade while further investments are being made at FN Steel, British Steel’s sister company in the Netherlands.
The announcement comes a short time after British Steel announced it was conducting a feasibility study into the use of green hydrogen as a fuel source.
Xifeng Han, British Steel’s CEO, said: “This is an incredibly exciting time for our business with unprecedented levels of investment – fuelled by the drive of our employees – powering us towards a sustainable future.
“While we’re still in the early stages of our transformation, these projects are a major step forward for British Steel and our customers. The new technology and manufacturing capabilities will significantly enhance our product range and deliver improved operational performance and efficiencies.
“Steel is vital to modern economies and investments like these will ensure we keep delivering the steel our customers and the world need while playing a central role in transitioning to a low-carbon, circular economy.”
The new billet caster, which will manufacture lengths of semi-finished steel known as billets, is being installed by Danieli and is expected to be commissioned at the end of the year. It will enable the company to both increase capacity and grow into new markets.
Richard Longbottom, technical manager, Steelmaking Development, said: “The new caster will produce billets of an even higher standard, with much better internal and surface qualities. We’ll also have a broader product range, enabling us to become more competitive and expand our offering to customers.”
Work is also underway to install state-of-the-art mill equipment to significantly extend engineering capabilities at British Steel’s Scunthorpe Rod Mill. Part of a £50 million investment announced in 2018, the scheme had been paused but is now being resumed under British Steel’s new ownership. Once the high-tech upgrade is complete, the company’s wire rod offering will have much-improved tolerances and surface quality with an extended product range with diameters up to 28mm. The product range will also offer customers considerably improved mechanical properties and enhanced options for supply condition such as normalised rolled and low-temperature rolled wire rod.
The reconfigured mill layout and new equipment are expected to be commissioned in 2023.
Phil Knowles, British Steel’s commercial director for Wire Rod, said: “Our bespoke new facility will be a real game changer. We’ll be able to manufacture wire rod with tighter tolerance control, improved ovality and world-class surface quality, key factors in meeting current and future customer requirements.
“Our existing customers will also be able to take advantage of our enhanced package solutions as we open up a comprehensive product range. Our service excellence together with improved efficiencies for our customers mean this investment will deliver world-leading capabilities. We’ll be able to explore new market opportunities too, securing a strong future for our wire rod business. I’m very much looking forward to seeing our strategic plans become a reality.”
Local coffee legends make huge strides in sustainability
120-year-old family firm, Stokes Tea & Coffee are well known for their top-notch coffee – now they’re also becoming quite the pioneers in eco-friendly innovations.
In its latest developments, the company is installing a cutting-edge heating system that will not only cut carbon emissions by more than a third but enable the company to reduce energy usage and harness solar power too.
The new system is being installed at Stokes’ HQ (where its roastery is also based), at the Lawn Building, a 19th Century former asylum on Union Road in Lincoln. The company moved operations here in 2017 following an extensive £2million refurbishment and restoration project which took two years to complete.
Andy Jackson, project manager at Stokes Tea & Coffee, explained: “We like to make things last at Stokes, but, after 43 years of service from our heating boilers, it was time for an overhaul. Historical buildings are notoriously difficult to heat and we were determined to find a system that would rise to the challenges on both efficiency and emissions.
“We’re pleased to see the installation of our new Viessmann boilers which are so efficient we only need two instead of the previous three and each boiler is 30% more efficient which means even less energy usage and emissions. It’s clever too as it has weather compensation equipment installed which monitors changing external temperatures and automatically adjusts output. This information can be collected, and adjustments made remotely to improve efficiency and we won’t even know it’s been done.
“The new system can be set up to heat specific zones or rooms rather than the whole building, and it’s also capable of collecting and using solar energy to heat water – so the scope for further savings on emissions and wastage is huge!
“We are striving to make our Grade II* listed Lawn Building into an eco-showcase location to help share knowledge and experience in waste and emission reduction with anyone who has the challenges of owning or occupying historical buildings like ours.”
Stokes Tea & Coffee may have a long history, but this certainly isn’t holding them back when it comes to leading on cutting edge innovation, and the team remains unshakeable in its focus on achieving ambitious sustainability targets.
Other sustainable actions taken by the firm include:
- The Zero Waste scheme which is designed to cut down on packaging waste by delivering coffee and tea to Stokes’ wholesale customers in reusable buckets that keep products perfectly fresh and in peak condition, saving the use of thousands of boxes and packets
- Reducing road miles through smart logistics, remote problem-solving and a help desk for customers, and sourcing local produce for Stokes’ cafés
- Investing in recyclable packaging and re-purposing/upcycling materials
- Supporting the free top-up refill water scheme
- Planting trees in the UK and overseas
- Reducing emissions with one of the most eco-friendly coffee roasters to cut the use of natural gas and reduce CO2 emissions
- Using smart lighting in Stokes’ buildings
- Introducing a cycle-to-work scheme
NEBOSH launches new service to shake-up in-house health and safety training
NEBOSH – one of the world’s leading providers of health and safety qualifications – has launched a new solution for businesses that want to improve their in-company training.
The NEBOSH Endorsed service will – as its name suggests – endorse great health and safety training. When companies invest in training, they want to see a return. Through a collaborative approach, NEBOSH will help organisations to elevate their in-company offering and deliver measurable behavioural change that contributes to healthier and safer workplaces.
A range of solutions are available via NEBOSH Endorsed. They are all tailored to the needs of individual organisations and emphasise learning that delivers tangible impact:
- Assessment and endorsement of existing in-company learning,
- Bespoke consultation and development of in-company training.
University expertise helps secure major funding to support the future of British farming
Academics from the University of Lincoln have collaborated to secure more than £1.6m for innovative projects that will help to ensure the sustainability of British farming and agriculture.
The funding has been awarded through Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, which seeks projects that will improve sustainability, productivity, and resilience of farming in the UK on a path to net zero.
A total of 23 projects were awarded funding, four of which have involved academic teams at the Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology (LIAT) and Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS).
The projects have been developed in partnership with industry leaders and look to address issues faced by those in the industry with new, innovative solutions.
The four projects are:
- Project High Speed Header (HSH): Next Generation Combines, which is led by Eyre Trailers Ltd. This project will develop a novel tractor mounted combine harvesting implement. This simple innovation will significantly reduce harvester mass enabling a flexible tractor mounted system, reducing the environmental impact caused by traditional large machines which cause soil compaction and loss of biodiversity and carbon reservoirs from boundary hedges and ditches. Larger machines also often provide a cost barrier to new farmers; this new solution will lead to a reduction in financial costs.
- The ARWAC Attack Blackgrass in Farming project, led by ARWAC Ltd, will create a robot powered by renewable energy, which will track and hoe blackgrass in commercial wheat crops. Due to herbicide resistance, blackgrass is responsible for £300m of yearly crop losses on UK farms and represents an increasing threat to food security. This project takes mechanical weeding to the next level, using autonomous technology to increase potential wheat yield and drive productivity whilst reducing the use of chemicals, fossil fuels, and manpower. The robot will be co-created and demonstrated on Lincolnshire farms.
- Led by Earth Rover Ltd, the automated selective broccoli harvesting to increase grower productivity and resilience towards net zero project will take a proof-of-concept broccoli harvesting machine to in-field testing, developing a pre-production prototype. The new automated approach will not only help address issues caused by labour shortages, with broccoli typically harvested manually, but also around food waste. The new harvester will harvest the whole broccoli plant, opening the potential to create valuable and nutritious plant-based foods from what was previously seen as crop waste
- The Collaborative fruit (Co-FRUIT) retrieval using intelligent transportation project, led by Performance Projects Ltd, proposes an innovative approach to harvesting, using a novel low-cost robot platform and collaborative human-robot teams. Artificial Intelligence is utilised to allocate tasks, maximising labour efficiency: humans undertake tasks for which they are particularly highly skilled with robots complementing the human skills. This could include robots transporting berries harvested by humans from polytunnels to the packing stations. Co-FRUIT models the activities of individual workers, while using AI and robots to demonstrate a cost-effective and efficient collaborative harvesting solution that achieves a step change in productivity in soft-fruit harvesting and helping to address well-documented labour shortages.
Plans revealed for new South Yorkshire solar energy park
Plans for a renewable energy generation and storage project to the east of Sheffield are set to be revealed.
Independent renewable energy firm Banks Renewables is developing a planning application for a new solar energy park on a 116-hectare piece of agricultural land to the west of the Todwick Road Industrial Estate in Dinnington, around three miles east of Banks’ Penny Hill wind farm.
The Common Farm solar project would have an installed capacity of up to 50MW, which would be enough to meet the annual energy requirements of up to 18,800 family homes and would displace over 11,470 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the electricity supply network each year.
A 50MW battery energy storage system linking directly into the Thurcroft electricity sub-station around three kilometres to the north of the site would also form part of the project and would help to support the long-term security of energy supplies to UK consumers.
As part of the company’s policy of delivering tangible benefits to the places in which its operations are based, at least £50,000 of the revenues generated by the Common Farm project would be made available every year as part of a package to support local good causes. This equates to more than £2,000,000 through the lifetime of the project.
A detailed ecology and biodiversity strategy is also being developed to ensure the site delivers a net benefit in biodiversity to the local community.
Banks Renewables is expecting to submit a planning application to Rotherham Council for the new scheme in the coming months, with a view to it being determined before the end of the year.
Lewis Stokes, senior community relations manager at The Banks Group, says: “Maximising the production of renewable energy from domestic sources is a crucial part of the UK’s ongoing journey towards its Net Zero targets, especially within the current energy security climate, and the Common Farm solar scheme will further extend the contribution that we’re able to make locally towards reaching these goals.
“The project is located in an area that we know very well, and having conducted a detailed search, we identified this site as providing the best opportunity to create a solar park that links directly into the Thurcroft substation.”
Jill Askew, solar and flex project manager at Banks Renewables, adds: “As more sources of renewable energy are connected to the system, more innovative ways of storing the electricity they produce will be required.
“Peaks of energy demand usually take place in the morning and early evening, but this is not necessarily when renewable energy is being generated.
“The battery energy storage system at Common Farm would help to ensure reliable, stable and balanced electricity grid operation at times of peak demand and would support the UK’s continuing drive towards its Net Zero ambitions.”
Lewis Stokes continues: “We are really looking forward to meeting and working closely with local residents, stakeholders and other community representatives to ensure we develop a comprehensive and detailed planning application, while taking on board their views on what might be delivered in a package of local benefits that will form a key part of the project.
“This will also help to ensure that this package will extend the substantial contribution we’ve been making to enhancing local communities for the best part of a decade.
“We’re excited at what can be achieved through this important project and hope that Rotherham Council’s planning committee will support the vision we’re now developing.”
FSB signs up to Menopause Workplace Pledge
The Federation of Small Businesses has become the latest employer to sign the Menopause Workplace Pledge. The pledge, run by Wellbeing of Women, for which HRH The Countess of Wessex is Royal Patron, aims to redress the lack of awareness of and support for women in the workplace who are experiencing menopause.
Women make up nearly half of the UK workforce, but around 900,000 have left their jobs because of periods, fertility struggles, pregnancy or menopause.
FSB research found 64 per cent of small businesses employ at least one woman aged 50 or over. FSB hopes that more small businesses will sign the pledge to help retain this talent.
Julie Lilley, CEO of the Federation of Small Businesses said: “I’m pleased that we’ve signed the Pledge; women over 50 are the fastest growing section of the workforce and it’s important that women get the support they need.
“Employers and the economy are missing out on huge numbers of exceptionally talented women – and I want to do all I can to make sure that FSB isn’t going to miss out on that amazing pool of talent.
“As an SME, we’ve always sought to recruit and retain the best expert staff team to support our small business members and this is a further step in that.”
Janet Lindsay, CEO of Wellbeing of Women, said: “It is great to see that the Federation of Small Businesses has signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge. Collectively, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the biggest employers in the UK, and I hope this will encourage other companies to support their workforce and sign our pledge. It will also make FSB a better place in which to work.”
The menopause is a natural part of ageing that usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age, as a woman’s oestrogen levels decline. An estimated 13 million women in the UK are living with the menopause – six in ten of them say that their symptoms have had a negative impact on their work.
FSB hopes by signing the Pledge it may encourage its small business members to do the same. It is also part of FSB’s employee wellbeing focus to help recruit and retain the best talent.
360 appoints Senior Corporate Portfolio Manager
Hull-based 360 Chartered Accountants has appointed a new Senior Corporate Portfolio Manager. Mushiirah Mohungoo, who has 10 years’ experience in all aspects of accounting and finance, both in the UK and overseas, joins 360 from a leading London accountancy firm.
Adrian Hunter, MD of 360, says that attracting an accountant from the capital is testament to the way the firm looks after both its clients and its team. “We know Mushiirah is going to be a great asset. Her experience as an accountant, dealing with personal as well as corporate finance, will be invaluable to our clients and will be a great resource for her to share with the team here.”
As well as proactively managing a portfolio of corporate clients, Mushiirah will lead her own team of accountants and apprentices, developing their skill set and actively mentoring them as part of their professional development.
She said: “It’s a privilege to join such an amazing firm which will allow me to develop my skills even further. I’ve been reading about 360 in the news for a while now and monitoring their social media channels to see what they’re doing, so when I saw an opening, I jumped at the opportunity. They are so passionate about putting their clients at the heart of their decision-making – and they really care for the wellbeing of their employees too. I have also been impressed by their corporate environmental policies, including having a paperless office, as well as their support of the local community. They’re doing something great here and I’m really pleased to be a part of it.”
Planning permission secured for award winning zero-carbon, affordable homes
The impact of City of York Council’s Housing Delivery Programme has earned it two awards and approval to build 85 new zero-carbon homes.
The Planning Awards 2022 named the programme Best Housing Scheme (Fewer than 500 homes), and highly commended it for the Design Excellence award.
The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Yorkshire awarded the programme Excellence in Plan-Making, and will forward the scheme to the national RTPI awards later this year.
Alongside these awards, planning permission has now been granted to build 85 super energy-efficient, zero-carbon homes at the Hospital Fields Road and Ordnance Lane site in Fishergate. At present 40% of the homes are earmarked for a mixture of social rent and shared ownership, with grant funding now being sought to increase this further. This is well in excess of planning policy requirements.
The houses and apartments are designed to generous space standards which will support home working and accessibility. Each will have private outdoor space and there will be two new public green spaces where community growing can sit alongside car-free routes that connect to the wider neighbourhood. The plans also include indoor community spaces and work spaces.
The Victorian ‘Married Quarters’ building will be kept and retrofitted to very high thermal comfort standards, and will be converted into an innovative intergenerational apartment building with community space.
Cllr Denise Craghill, executive member for housing and safer neighbourhoods at City of York Council, said: “We know building well-designed affordable, energy efficient homes is the right thing to do. These awards are a wonderful recognition of our ambitions to improve the quality and quantity of homes for York residents, and reflect the skill, flair and care taken by the design team.
“I’m thrilled with the award for the inspiring team driving the Housing Delivery Programme and for the residents who’ll be able to live and thrive in these new, beautifully designed communities.”
