Wayne Fowler – Sportsafe Service, Repair and Maintenance Engineer ESPO accreditation
Sportsafe have been working closely with ESPO for over 20 years, and the company’s uninterrupted delivery of gymnasium and fitness equipment maintenance services is set to continue as they retain their position on ESPO framework 107.
Framework 107, Inspection and Maintenance of Indoor Gymnasium, Fitness and Sport Equipment and Outdoor Schools Play and Sport Equipment, offers public sector authorities easy and quick access to quality suppliers who can successfully deliver the maintenance and inspection of indoor gymnasium, fitness and sport equipment, outdoor play and sport equipment, and minor repairs.
Sportsafe has a nationwide network of offices and engineer hubs ensuring our engineers are not more than 90 minutes away from our sites. The company employs over 25 Inspectors and Engineers all of them employed by Sportsafe and DBS checked for our customers site safety. Sportsafe hold CHAS, Constructionline Gold and Alcumus SafeContractor health and safety accreditations, and they are also a member of AFPE and ROSPA, giving their customers peace of mind that their equipment is in safe hands.
Claire Hunt, Sales & Marketing Director says, “Following 20 years of a close working relationship with ESPO, we are proud to continue delivering this service across the UK. This award adds to our year of celebration as we mark our 25th anniversary in 2022.”
Part of the Sportsafe submission referred to the new inspection and maintenance system that was deployed earlier this year, the benefits include:
Connection of all the teams within Sportsafe to provide continuity of service to our customers
Paper free which assists us with our ISO 14001 aims
Improves the speed between inspection and receipt of quotation for repairs, improving our customer equipment downtime
Asset tagging and product lifecycle statis enabling our customers to budget more accurately for new equipment
Management information for contract holders.
ESPO is a customer-focused, public sector owned professional buying organisation. Established in 1981, ESPO has the purchasing power to achieve savings to pass on to customers. ESPO is jointly owned by its six member authorities: Leicestershire County Council, Lincolnshire County Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, Norfolk County Council, Warwickshire County Council, and Peterborough City Council.
For more information on the ESPO frameworks please visit www.espo.org/
Integrated solution enables IT agility, productivity, and actionable intelligence for organisations of all sizes and industries, wherever they are on their modernisation and cloud migration journeys
SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI), a leading provider of simple, powerful, and secure IT management software, announces the launch of SolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability, built on the SolarWinds Platform. The SolarWinds Platform offers organisations of any size the ability to accelerate their digital transformation efforts by providing a comprehensive and unified view of today’s modern, distributed, and hybrid network environments.
As organisations progress their digital transformation initiatives, they’re modernising their operations, applications, and databases, and leveraging hybrid and multi-cloud deployments—all while supporting existing, traditional workloads and systems. Organisations managing these complex, diverse, and distributed environments have amassed various monitoring and management tools across different teams. According to Gartner®, “for overlapping toolsets—many enterprises already have upward of 15 monitoring tools and do not wish to add further complexity.”1 As a result, ITOps, DevOps, and SecOps teams receive an overload of alerts and disjointed analytics and have difficulty accessing the actionable insights they need to quickly identify, prioritise, and resolve issues in business-critical services. These disparate tools can also be cumbersome to implement and manage, and they can become cost-prohibitive to maintain and scale, creating operational and business risks.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability helps solve these problems through an integrated, comprehensive, and cost-effective full-stack solution designed to provide end-to-end oversight of service delivery and component dependencies, helping organisations shift from a reactive to proactive IT posture as they meet the challenges of today’s hybrid IT realities. With Hybrid Cloud Observability, tech pros gain single-pane-of-glass monitoring with actionable intelligence to expedite problem resolution and enable proactive management. SolarWinds applies built-in intelligence and AIOps to its full-stack solution. The platform is built to help organisations continuously improve performance, availability, security, and digital experience across complex, diverse, and distributed hybrid and cloud environments.
“The level of IT complexity organisations face is growing at an unprecedented scale due to tool sprawl, rising costs, security threats, and siloed operations,” said Rohini Kasturi, chief product officer, SolarWinds. “Customers have told us clearly, they need help to meet today’s challenges and reduce operational noise so their teams can scale to address a broad range of business needs faster, maximise budget outcomes, and drive business results.
“Building upon our more than 20 years of delivering monitoring and management solutions to market-leading organisations across different segments and verticals, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability provides organisations with a single solution from one vendor, delivering a more streamlined approach to helping them advance their modernisation and cloud migration initiatives,” Kasturi continued.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability enables organisations across all sizes and industries to gain rapid time to value, ensure service levels, accelerate issue resolution, and reduce alert fatigue and risk. It’s designed to help organisations do the following:
Accelerate issue resolution with actionable intelligence: The platform’s full-stack and integrated coverage helps IT teams make faster and more informed, coordinated, and effective decisions. Users can readily discover, map, and understand dependencies to predict and prevent user experience degradation and service outages.
Ensure service levels to increase IT efficiency and business agility: Hybrid Cloud Observability helps teams meet service levels and more efficiently conduct problem resolution, configuration, reporting, and planning tasks, freeing up time to focus on more impactful activities to advance the business. Armed with correlated intelligence, teams can more efficiently identify, prioritise, and resolve problems and anomalies, reduce compliance and attack surface risks, and accurately determine where best to scale performance and capacity.
Benefit from a low cost of ownership: Enterprises gain centralised oversight to optimise on-premises and cloud resource costs with a unified solution built to simplify and improve cloud migration efforts. The suite approach allows organisations to cost-effectively start and extend Hybrid Cloud Observability across hybrid and cloud environments with a unified experience, deployment, scalability, and support—offering a low total cost of ownership.
The SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability Essentials and Advanced tiers are now available, with additional offerings planned for later this year.
1Gartner, Innovation Insight for Observability, Padraig Byrne, Josh Chessman, September 28, 2020, refreshed on March 9, 2022.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Trueman Change are delighted to announce the launch of their new change methodology, derived from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – The Trueman Change Way. This is a people-first approach, created from the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented into change accelerator programmes to ensure transformation can continue to happen faster and more compassionately for cost-effective, sustainable outcomes.
Prior to the pandemic, change in large, complex public sector organisations was often slow, clunky and expensive. It was common for organisations to run over time and budget, damage morale, and not get the outcomes they needed. During covid, large scale change and transformation happened at pace, and Trueman Change have been conducting research, interviews and evaluations into how this happened.
This has resulted in the development of a new methodology and a change accelerator programme, designed to support organisations to kick start future change and transformation taking this recent learning and best practice, and embedding it at the heart of all future change.
To celebrate our new methodology we have designed and implemented a new Change Readiness Report Tool which helps change leaders to assess how ready for change they really are. It is a free 5-minute sense check on change in organisations, which then provides a full report scoring key areas which are known to be fundamental to good change management in a post covid world. When done well, change is empowering, exciting and impactful. Good change happens when organisations have the right components in place. Our free tool checks against these components:
1. Clarity, so everyone knows what needs to change and why
2. Putting people at the heart of change (not process)
3. Getting it done, with the right resources, culture and leadership
Within 5 minutes, public sector organisations answer 12 yes or no questions and the results are generated instantly, providing a sleek report with feedback to enhance their change readiness score. We offer a free 20-minute consultation to leaders who book a call with us to discuss options moving forward.
Our methodology – The Trueman Change Way – was created in response to managing change during the pandemic. In 2020, we wrote a white paper ‘Lessons Learned: Managing Change During the COVID-19 Crisis.’ This insightful paper captured the lessons learned during that period and highlighted six themes that were evident in all successful change programmes: Purpose, Clarity, Humanity, Collaboration, Action and Perseverance. Throughout the following year, Trueman Change ran a series of free online Change Chat events to understand this further. The Change Chat events discussed planning and delivering change throughout COVID. The expert speakers – public sector leaders from around country – and guests discussed in depth these six attributes and how they impacted positively on both organisations and communities.
That year of research was used to form the foundations of Trueman Change’s new methodology – The Trueman Change Way. Lucy Trueman, Managing Director, explains why she created this new approach to change:
“Change is constant, and now that we have experienced ‘what good change looks like’ we cannot afford to go back to old bureaucratic ways that affect morale and do not deliver. Our people-first methodology drives change faster and more compassionately for cost-effective, sustainable outcomes. It is humanistic and ensures a sense of purpose is established and communicated continuously, enabling change to happen effectively. It is important that we get this right as we care about the communities we support, and we want to see them thrive because of the difference we have been able to make.”
Andrew Grant, Interim Chief Executive for Castle Point Borough Council, an expert speaker on Trueman Changes’ Change Chat event in May 2021, concurred:
“Leadership that can successfully inspire, motivate and drive change meaningfully is largely dependent on good cultural alignment and clarity in communication. The Trueman Change Way methodology is about getting these attributes right first, as it not only focusses on what people need to know and do to enable change to happen, but it also encourages exploration into how people feel, and what they believe, to establish a shared sense of purpose.”
The Trueman Change Way methodology has been incorporated into a selection of Trueman Change’s smart solutions, including a new Change Accelerator Programme, and a free Change Readiness Report tool. Lucy Trueman’s first book on managing change post-COVID will be published soon. This book introduces the Trueman Change Wheel and its six ingredients for positive change.
50,000 paper files already scanned and made available electronically to clinicians
CCube Solutions announces today that Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has implemented its electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) to store legacy and day-forward paper medical records as part of a substantial investment to deliver digitally-enabled care.
The EDRMS project is part of a major digital transformation change programme within the Trust – to boost clinical and organisational efficiency – which will also see the procurement of a new organisational-wide EPR[1] system and the integration of the two new platforms together.
Fully operational and ‘live’ today, 7,500 clinical staff will be trained to the use the CCube EDRMS to ultimately access all of the Trust’s medical files – totalling around 650,000 patient records all of which are in the process of being scanned. This will help support the Trust’s busy workload of 32,000 outpatient appointments per month, delivered primarily from its large Blackpool Victoria Hospital site.
EDRMS provides instant access to medical records, enhances patient safety through 100% notes availability, improves clinical effectiveness, enhances security and auditing and saves money. It is also allowing storage areas to be converted into much needed clinical space.
Geoff Burrow, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals’ Chief Information Officer, explains, “Covid obviously delayed our progress with this project, but we’re now fully operational with EDRMS and focused on getting rid of the paper. Over 50,000 paper records have already been scanned in, each containing about 300 pages.”
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is situated on the west coast of Lancashire and operates within a regional health economy catchment area that spans Lancashire and South Cumbria, supporting a population of 1.6 million and an estimated 18 million visitors to the seaside town of Blackpool. The Trust also provides specialist tertiary care for cardiac and haematology services across this region, as well as hosting the National Artificial Eye Service.
Blackpool Victoria Hospital
The vast workload to scan all paper notes is being done in two ways. First, the Trust has invested in creating its own scanning department where 35 staff use 10 Opex Falcon scanners, supplied by CCube Solutions, to process the paperwork. Second, scanning has also been outsourced within the National Health Service to the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) – one of the largest specialist scanning operators in Europe – who use the same Opex Falcon equipment.
A not-for-profit arm’s length body of the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHSBSA has long track record in document scanning given its expertise and heritage processing all paper prescriptions in the UK which still total tens of millions per month.
The Opex Falcon scanners are rated at 116 pages per minute at 300 dpi – the resolution recommended to meet BS 10008, a best practice records standard for the implementation and operation of electronic information management systems, including the storage, extraction and transfer of information.
Burrow says, “CCube EDRMS is designed to literally be an online version of the paper record and has six sections busy clinicians are familiar with. This makes it easy and intuitive for them to find the documents they need whether it be clinical correspondence, clinical notes, treatment documents, investigation reports, safeguarding documents and so on.”
Given the transition underway between paper and electronic notes, when clinicians log into the Trust’s Patient Administration System (PAS) today, they are currently presented with a marker to show whether the patient’s record is available digitally or still in paper format.
Burrow adds, “We’re currently working on the detail but the strategy will be to adopt scan-on-demand so that when a patient is booked for an appointment, their notes are pulled from the library, digitised ahead of time and then made available in the CCube EDRMS. This then saves moving any paper files about.”
The shift from paper to digital health records will deliver a variety of other benefits:
100% notes availability. Electronic health records are available at the touch of a button to the right person at any time. This avoids delays in patients receiving treatment – or even appointments cancelled – if their paperwork isn’t readily available.
Remote and multi-user access. Remote and multi-user access to health records is now delivered 24/7. This is key given the ‘new normal’ of remote working post pandemic and the requirement for multi-disciplinary teams to collaborate together – and view medical notes at the same time – to provide care to an individual.
‘In context’ access to medical records to be offered. As the Trust is currently procuring a new organisational-wide EPR, once this is finalised and the software deployed, a link will be added so that clinicians opening a patient’s record in the EPR can see – in context – the legacy digitised health record held in the EDRMS, too. This links the two systems together.
Security and data integrity is enhanced. Scanning records vastly improves the security of confidential patient information as files once digitised cannot degrade, be lost or be misplaced. Data is also backed up, access to the system logged and audited, and information lifecycle management rules applied to the data.
The CCube EDRMS runs on Dell EMC server and storage systems in the Trust’s two on-premise datacentres, dual-linked for resilience to ensure system availability and uptime.
Vijay Magon, CCube Solutions’ managing director, says, “Our research shows that on average a paper record is handled 10 to 15 times from storage to delivery. Not only is there an infection risk as people touch the paper but the costs just keep mounting each time files are requested and then put away. It is super to support Blackpool Teaching Hospitals address this: an invest to save process to get rid of the paper once and for all which will massively increase efficiency, improve staff productivity and enhance the overall care provided to patients locally.”
By Victoria Preece, Compliance Director – allpay Limited
“Competition law compliance is not always given the attention that it deserves. I would like to see anti-competitive behaviour taken as seriously by UK businesses and boards as the risks around bribery, fraud, health and safety and cybercrime.” Lord David Currie, Chairman, Competition and Markets Authority (Competition Law Risk: Short Guide V 2.0)
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing’ and ‘Prevention is better than cure’. We have all said these well-known phrases in our lives but if we knew what to do to prevent the need for hindsight surely, we would always do it?
As a Compliance professional I will always look for the risks and advise that you do all that you can to reduce or mitigate them. Sometimes you must accept them, but at least you have paid attention to them and taken them seriously. If we’d followed Lord Currie’s advice, and in hindsight, we would have paid as much attention to the risks associated with competition law as we do every day in diligently monitoring and managing our fraud or security risks.
Our own experience began in 2017 when, after raising an incident of concern to the Regulators, we found ourselves ensnared in the investigation into ‘Cartel behaviour’ that followed.
Ironically, if we hadn’t made the initial steps to raise the flag, it is likely that the behaviour of several attendees of the Industry Network Meeting involved would never have come to light, left undiscovered and the subsequent fines unlevied; but not reporting was never a thought.
Under competition law, ‘just being in the room’ can effectively lead to an individual or business being guilty, by association. Having our reputation tarnished alongside others within the Network that we had innocently joined is something allpay will have to deal with.
However, as ‘the informant’ or ‘the complainant,’ the terms that the Regulators prefer, we had an overwhelming feeling that there was no sense of proportionality to the way each company was dealt with. We were very unprepared for the five years of investigation that followed and although we had raised concerns about a clear act of anti-competitive behaviour, we had not considered that the industry meetings that we had attended with naivety were linked to the separate and clearly anti- competitive act we had reported.
Similarly in December 2016, a representative of Balmoral Tanks famously attended one meeting of what turned out to be a cartel, a cartel they refused to join. It ended in the same result, the regulator acting against all parties, including Balmoral Tanks despite them refusing to join the cartel.
Although Balmoral Tanks knew that they were reporting cartel behaviour and we did not, we have had to accept a fine whilst strongly denying ever knowingly joining or agreeing to participate in a cartel. We now know that we were ignoring the request of the cartel not to compete but did not appreciate that we were effectively in that cartel.
However, another well-known phrase is ‘ignorance of the law is no defence’ and looking back we could have known, indeed should have known that stepping outside our organisation into an environment with other competitors is fraught with competition law risk. We needed more training across the whole business, to mitigate that risk. On reflection a small investment to make versus the fines imposed by the Regulators.
In hindsight we accept that the Regulator has a job to do, they seek to identify where the law has been broken and bring those criminals to justice. And that is exactly how it feels, you are a criminal, even if you were not in the room, or even as a director unaware of those Network Meetings being attended by others in the business, you still bear the blame attached to the reputational damage that comes from the media reporting of the whole sorry affair.
Employees at allpay have been left feeling disappointed in themselves, in us as a business, let down through uninformed behaviour. Although not a member of the allpay Board when this started for us, I feel the outcome and damage to our good name weigh heavy on my mind as I have a duty to protect the staff, the business and importantly the vulnerable customers we provide services to support.
The Payment Services Regulator (PSR) have been in dialogue with us post investigation as we reached out to them to try to understand what else can be done to protect other businesses from suffering their investigation process, and suffering it is! It drains you of time, energy, resources and ultimately undermines hard fought reputation after being portrayed as ‘guilty’ among those attention-grabbing media headlines.
In his response Chris Helmsley, the Managing Director of the PSR, has reminded us that the Regulators are there to protect end users, customers, by ensuring anti-competitive behaviour is ended. Does that imply that we, allpay, having been found guilty (unwittingly) of cartel behaviour, do not have our customer protection at the heart of our business?
As the Compliance Director, one of the many hats I wear is that of MLRO (Money Laundering Reporting Officer) and alongside the rest of the Board, I work hard to ensure that the often very vulnerable customers we work with are protected, even when it has not been mandated for us as a E- money Institution.
APP or Authorised Push Payment Fraud is a very real threat facing anyone who uses a payment account to transfer funds, and our customers use faster payments system to pay their care bills every day. Last year we took the strategic decision to invest in a Confirmation of Payee service for our Prepaid Card accountholders. We developed our own software solution and paid a significant fee to enrol with PAY UK to complete the implementation (due by May 2022). We did this to add an extra layer of protection for our customers, not to meet a regulatory requirement, and not an improvement we will charge customers extra for, it just felt like the right thing to do to give our customers the best protection we can.
We make decisions in the interests of our customers every day, so to be found guilty of breaking Competition Law for having reported anti-competitive behaviour within our industry has been doubly painful.
Would we raise concern again? Absolutely, without hesitation, but we are better equipped to understand the painful process that the PSR take you through, with no support or direction. We agreed to an expedited process, again in hindsight not understanding what that meant in terms of being able to manage the process to help ourselves better. We believed we were helping the Regulator save time and money and get to an earlier decision. In fact, we had agreed to have our potential guilt and then our actual guilt publicly reported on twice.
And so, why share this tale of woe with a wider audience? It’s behind us and we are moving on stronger and wiser. However, if nothing good comes from our experience then an opportunity has been missed. Every business owner, Board Director, Executive and Senior Manager may already
know that if they don’t not pay enough attention to competition law then they risk a long and reputationally damaging journey. But can you ask yourselves the following questions and confidently say yes to them?
Do we know what are our present competition law compliance risks?
Which activities in our business model are likely to create situations where competition law becomes an issue?
Do we have a healthy culture in our organisation in respect of CMA risk?
If you do nothing more, review your training and make sure your people have completed it. How do you know that the meeting or conference you are going to next week isn’t leading to an investigation by the Regulators? That may feel a little dramatic but that is the reality that we have been through…… and we can all do with a little less drama in our lives!
“I was just going to a meeting to shake a few hands. It was almost a social occasion where you just said hello to your rivals in the industry. I didn’t give it any real thought… Staggering stupidity with the benefit of hindsight.” From Does Prison Work for Cartelists? – The view from behind bars.
An interview of Bryan Allison by Michael O’Kane (The Antitrust Bulletin: Vol 56, No. 2, summer 2011)
Local authorities that own or operate electricity generation like solar, wind, gas and combined heat and power (CHP) have got just four weeks left to apply for funding to help them update their generation equipment. The deadline for applications is Tuesday 10 May 2022.
The funding is part of the Accelerated Loss of Mains Change Programme (ALoMCP), a scheme operated by National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) and the GB Distribution Network Operators. The funding can help generation owners, like local authorities, become compliant with new mandatory Distribution Code regulations – the regulations that generator owners must abide by to connect to the electricity network. Once the funding ends, generator owners will still need to meet the compliance requirements but will have to pay for the updates themselves.
The new regulations come into effect on 1 September 2022, by which point, all electricity generation within the scope of the programme must be compliant, or face Ofgem approved enforcement action. In Scotland alone, local authorities owned 16% of operational locally owned energy generation. Many of these authorities will own generators that are within the scope of the programme, which includes generation that:
• Was installed before February 2018 (or in some cases, July 2018).
• Is between 11kW and 50MW in capacity.[1]
• Is connected via the G59 engineering requirement of the Distribution Code.
The equipment updates concern the inverters, converters or G59 relays that are responsible for the Loss of Mains protection settings on the generator. They are an instrumental part of all generation equipment and help protect both the generator and the network from potential faults. In updating the protection settings, the generation becomes more reliable and therefore embeds the electricity network with more strength and resilience.
Cheng Chen, the senior manager for the ALoMCP at National Grid ESO, says: “Compliance with Loss of Mains requirements is not optional and so electricity generator owners should take advantage of the funding that is available now to help them make the upgrades.”
Non-compliant generation poses a risk to the electricity network and those not compliant from 1 September 2022 could be subject to an enforcement process that could result in the de-energisation of the whole site.
As a result of widespread Loss of Mains compliance, Great Britain’s electricity network will be better able to bring more renewable electricity generators online, as a more resilient network can support additional low carbon generation.
Mr Chen added: “This is a relatively small change for most generator owners to make, but if we can achieve widespread compliance the combined impact will have a huge benefit to our electricity network. By becoming compliant, generator owners will be futureproofing their power and helping to deliver a strong, resilient, and low carbon electricity network to protect our power for future generations.”
A new scheme that local authorities can invest their Local Authority Delivery Scheme (LADs) and Home Upgrade Grant Scheme (HUGs) budgets in has received backing from British Gas and So Energy.
Neil Marshall – director of external affairs – Effective Energy Group
Developed by Nottinghamshire-based, Effective Energy Group, Help4Homes goes further than some Government-led schemes that focus solely on energy reduction, and provides energy saving advice, free heating, insulation and white goods, and an income maximisation service for low-income and vulnerable households struggling to pay their energy bills.
EG’s Help4Homes scheme has already helped 1,500 homes in England and Wales
Since going live at the end of 2021 with an initial £500k of funding, the response to Help4Homes has been overwhelmingly positive and it has already provided support for 1,500 households in England and Wales, delivering everything from energy reduction measures through to significant increases in household incomes – in some case up to £3,000 a year.
Neil Marshall, director of external affairs at Effective Energy Group, said: “Help4Homes is the ideal vehicle for local authorities looking to put their LADs, HUGs and local budgets to use in a manner that will make a huge difference to households that need it the most.”
Simon Oscroft, Co-Founder at So Energy added: “Help4Homes will only grow in its importance this year, particularly now that the energy price rise has hit home and bills have increased for millions of households. At So Energy we have always looked to do right by our customers, going above and beyond to help those most in need, so we’re delighted to support Help4Homes during this time.”
Can government and public sector organisations do more to protect national water supplies?
Smarti Environmental, the UK’s leading waterless urinal provider, is urging government and public sector organisations to play their part in the battle against needless water wastage following World Water Day and the Environment Secretary Minister Rebecca Pow’s call for the greater adoption of water efficient products.
Last year, as part of the Government’s drive to protect national water supplies, seven new areas were designated as being under serious water stress. These include Severn Trent Water, South Staffordshire Water, Wessex Water, Portsmouth Water, Cambridge Water, the Bournemouth area of South West Water, and the Isles of Scilly. Each are due to publish water resources management plans (WRMP) in 2022, that consider all options to manage demand more effectively – including metering and greater leakage reduction.
Smarti Environmental, which enables existing flushing urinals to go waterless in just a day, is encouraging government and public sector organisations to urgently review their use of flushing urinals in the battle against the UK’s growing water crisis. Its research shows that there are currently around 3.5 million water-supplied urinals in the UK, which collectively waste 217 billion litres of water each year, equivalent to 87 thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools.
To encourage the move to flushless urinals, Smarti Environmental is offering large organisations with 100 or more urinals within their group, a free washroom trial for 3-months, including free installation of its retro-fit waterless valves. Smaller businesses can also benefit from savings of more than 50% compared to the cost of running conventional flushing urinals.
As part of its installation service, Smarti Environmental is also offering to replace blocked or partially blocked pipework – the result of the chemical reaction between urine and water in flushing urinals. Each year, blocked or partially blocked urinal pipes account for thousands of floods in gents across the UK, resulting in expensive plumbing and clean up bills.
Kimberley Hill, Sales Manager at Smarti Environmental, commented: “Businesses have a key part to play in reducing needless water waste, and one of the simplest and most cost-effective steps is to switch to waterless urinals. This not only saves 100,000 litres of water per urinal, per year, but it also cuts related costs by more than half, and CO2 by 105kg per urinal. To put that into perspective, if all urinals in the UK went waterless, that would be the equivalent of removing 100,000 diesel cars from the road.”
Kimberly Hill added: “As an accredited Carbon Neutral Business, we’re doing all we can to make a positive difference to the environment, and that includes the use of environment-friendly enzyme technology. This ends the need for harsh cleaning materials, and avoids pollutants from entering the waste-water system, further enhancing the environmental benefits of waterless urinals. For organisations looking to a net zero future, we provide part of the solution to achieving this.”
Commenting on the seven water company areas identified as being under serious water stress, Environment Agency Chair, Emma Howard Boyd, said: “Fresh water is the world’s most precious commodity and everyone needs to wake up to the fact that there is less of it to go around. If we continue to operate as usual, by 2050 the amount of water available in England could be reduced by 10 to 15 percent, some rivers could have between 50 and 80 percent less water during the summer, and we will not be able to meet the demands of people, industry and agriculture.”
Smarti Environmental’s waterless urinals are used both by private and public sector organisations including the NHS. Its retro-fit, waterless one-way multi-valve technology traps and prevent all odours from drains, breaks down all biofilms and uric salts in pipework to prevent blocked pipes, and stops the spread of viruses through the absence of airborne aerosol germs created by flushing urinals. Made from fully recyclable materials, they fit 98% of standard urinals with no need to change urinal bowls, and reduce the annual running cost of a typical three bay urinal by between £630 and £1,230 a year.
Used in conjunction with Smarti’s eco-friendly, odour-eating and bacteria/virus busting SteriKleen surface spray, urinal cleaning is reduced to once every 24 hours, consisting of a wipe, spray and walk away process that leaves urinals clean and fresh. This makes switching to waterless urinals simple and easy, enabling businesses to Build Back Better and Greener.
Manx Care, Isle of Man were looking for solutions to replace an outdated legacy paging system that resulted in failed and delayed messaging impacting emergency response, with a modern progressive method of communication.
To address this challenge, Manx Care embarked on a project with Alcidion to deploy Smartpage Clinical, with a view to introduce Smartpage Non-Clinical and Smartpage Response in later project phases.
Manx Care innovating health and care services
Manx Care is the Isle of Man organisation tasked with delivering health and care services to the Island’s population. The start of a new era in public services on the island was marked on April 1, 2021. It involved the restructuring of the largest department in the IOM Government. This consisted of the separation of Department of Health and Social Care functions and the creation of a bespoke operational body.
The first organisation of its kind in the IOM, Manx Care is an entirely new statutory body, designed to operate at arms’ length from the Department of Health and Social Care and focusing on the delivery of services to the public. The organisation is led by an executive leadership team, employing around 2,500 health and care staff and covering a geographic area of 221 square miles with a population of over 84,000.
The two hospitals that Manx Care supports includes Noble’s Hospital, with 314 acute care beds (20 ward areas), and Ramsey Cottage Hospital with 48 beds (2 ward areas), each managing annual admissions/discharges of 20,038 and annual ED attendances of over 31,000.
Overcoming the challenge
The acute care group of Manx Care needed a reliable two-way messaging solution that would facilitate quick, auditable, accurate, accessible, patient-specific messaging to improve both communication and clinical work-streams and to benefit patient care. The solution was required for both emergency and non-emergency clinical scenarios across the hospitals.
Working alongside Manx Care’s chief clinical information officer Dr Gregor Peden, chief nursing information officer Rebecca Erani and supported by the Government Technology Services Team, Alcidion’s Smartpage Clinical was selected to be deployed across the acute care services.
Improving clinical support and patient care
Alcidion’s Smartpage Clinical provided Manx Care with a secure app for clinical staff to send and receive messages more efficiently and in a more structured, patient centred format without taking them away from delivering patient care.
Smartpage Clinical ensures confidentiality is maintained and gives clinicians the ability for instant two-way messaging, enabling rapid clinical decision making and effective patient care support. The solution also allows staff to create and share tasks according to their availability and workload, a key priority for the Manx Care digital team.
Smartpage Response contains an emergency paging system allowing the emergency group alerting to be sent out via an emergency ‘dashboard’ by switchboard and received by clinicians via the same Smartpage app. The Smartpage solution provides a more interactive, two-way, visible method of emergency paging which enables team communication and support for efficient working between both clinical staff, switchboard and emergency teams at Manx Care.
Delivering a flexible and supportive approach
The Smartpage Clinical and Smartpage Response capabilities have been extremely well received across Manx Care due to the simplicity, reliability and functionality of the system. Alcidion’s Smartpage implementation team offered a flexible and supportive approach and based on feedback during User Acceptance Testing and clinical practice, evolved the system to meet Manx Care’s needs.
Commenting on the benefits Dr Gregor Peden, chief clinical information officer, Manx Care, said: “Smartpage has provided Noble’s Hospital with a modern and intuitive messaging tool that helps to improve care and drive task efficiency by providing clinically rich information at the point of care. Working innovatively with Alcidion to deliver a product that met the needs of front-line staff meant that our roll out and user adoption was relatively effortless.”
Rebecca Erani, chief nursing information officer, Manx Care, also commented: “Through simple, person-centred technology, Smartpage has supported effective, concise communication delivered to the right person at the right time. This in turn has enabled more time focused on patient care and less time chasing information or clinician input, which is something as a collective workforce we are all striving towards.”
Other positive feedback from users of the system include that fact that clinical staff no longer have to waste time bleeping staff members and second guessing if they have received the bleep. Plus there is no longer a need to move away from assessing patients to go to a phone as now it is possible to see from a glance of the Smartpage phone who and why someone is messaging so that staff can prioritise accordingly.
The new system has been reported as being much quicker to use and has vastly improved the content and structure of patient information, for example the use of SBAR, especially in relation to the referral or escalation of acuity. It is now possible for staff to see which other emergency team members are responding to an emergency which helps with planning and organising workload if multiple emergency pages are received.
Looking ahead to the future
Due to the successful implementation of Smartpage Clinical in secondary care, Manx Care are reviewing options to begin onboarding Smartpage to general practitioners and district nurse teams as an effective communication tool to refer patients and request support where needed.
Secondary care is also expanding to incorporate Smartpage Non-Clinical for porters and housekeepers and integrate it directly with Alcidion’s Patientrack to enable automatic alerting based on National Early Warning Score (NEWS2).
Manx Care have seen an improvement in the acute referral process from the emergency department to inpatient care, in terms of referral acceptance and time to specialty review.
Nursing staff feel more confident and empowered to escalate patient care using Smartpage. With Patientrack to be integrated shortly, they will also be able to track escalation response.
The pace of digital transformation across the public sector has accelerated significantly in recent years, and with Covid-19 prompting a near-overnight shift to online services, the process has come a long way already. Services once requiring pages of paperwork now are fully digitised—renewing your passport or driver’s license can both be completed entirely online, for example.
But, as part of a wider strategy to build a modern, connected society, there remains work to be done to deliver effective digital services to meet the needs and expectations of users. For instance, if digital public sector services are to be successful, improve outcomes, and make better use of available budgets, there needs to be a significant emphasis on boosting the quality of the user experience.
As government minister Steve Barclay said last year, “Now more than ever, it is important that government responds to people’s heightened expectations about the services they use. During the pandemic, people have had to interact with public services in a variety of new ways, including the NHS app and the vaccine booking service. People rightly expect government to be data-driven and digitally literate, and this will be a priority for me in my new role.”
Where Are We Heading?
There are interesting examples of how the overall strategy is developing. Late last year, for instance, the Government Digital Service published an update for its proposed “One Login” system, described as a “mission to build a simple, joined-up, and personalised experience of government for everyone.” The idea is to provide a single sign-on and identity-checking system to replace the patchwork of login processes and credentials currently seen across different government services.
This is a major technology project. With a budget reportedly in the region of £400 million, it will be built in the cloud and run on Amazon Web Services, and will include the development of an app designed to streamline online processes and provide a better user experience.
Identity authentication is key to delivering secure services resilient to fraud, providing users with the confidence they need to use them on a regular basis. The general public has become used to authenticating themselves online across a huge range of consumer services. Consolidating access to government logins will help deliver a more connected approach, improve accessibility, and should result in a more effective experience all around.
It also offers the potential to integrate trusted third-party applications and services, like those provided by banking, insurance, and healthcare organisations, among others. In doing so, there is scope to improve efficiency and reduce the costly administrative overheads associated with existing manual processes.
Risks and Rewards
The size of the budget allocated to this strategy gives some context to the range of challenges it’s likely to face during its development and implementation. For starters, this is a complex undertaking, and given the difficulties faced by major public sector IT projects over the years, delivering a solution on time and within budget will represent a major achievement.
The conclusions of a report called, “The challenges in implemented digital change,” published by the National Audit Office last year, remind us these large-scale projects are extremely challenging. Its authors said, “despite 25 years of government strategies and countless attempts to deliver digital business change successfully, our reports show a consistent pattern of underperformance. This underperformance can often be the result of programmes not being sufficiently thought through before key decisions on technology solutions are made.”
As the report points out, this can cause major problems and remains a source of concern for a project as large and complex as One Login. “This means that there is a gap between what government intends to achieve and what it delivers to citizens and service users, which wastes taxpayers’ money and delays improvements in public services,” the report says. “If government is to improve its track record in delivering digital business change, it must learn the hard-won lessons of experience and equip its leaders to act effectively.”
As a result, there is certain to be intense scrutiny and, in some quarters, hostility to the development of this wide-ranging service. Whether the concerns centre around past performance, issues such as security and privacy, or come from people who oppose the idea of further government involvement in a digital society, the pressure will quickly build if there’s overspend or undue delay.
On the other hand, gaining public support and confidence by simplifying access to online public services with an effective solution delivery will be a major step in modernising the way government interacts with its citizens. For our increasingly digital-native population, this won’t be about innovation—it will represent a minimum requirement for people who spend more time than ever online.
Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum named cyber security failures as one of the biggest threats facing international governments and business, and the UK is no exception. The UK’s public sector is currently facing a rise in the number of cyber security incidents. The Ministry of Justice revealed that it faced a series of data breaches and ransomware attacks over the course of the 2020-21 financial year, and it will likely face many more in the near future.
How to protect yourself
To help business and government organisations keep themselves safe from the most common cyber-attacks, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) launched the Cyber Essentials certification scheme in 2014. This year, to help increase security across both the public and private sector, the NCSC has updated some of the scheme’s key requirements, which came into effect on the 24th January 2022.
Meeting these new requirements is necessary to pass the Cyber Essentials assessment, which is mandatory for certain Government departments and advised for most other sectors. Although these changes are positive and much needed as cyber threats become ever more sophisticated, they will require extra effort for public sector departments, and accredited third party suppliers, to comply. Companies will be given six months to complete the certifications and ensure their systems are secure, with 12 months’ grace on some requirements.
The certification’s cost
One of the main changes to Cyber Essentials is the new tiered pricing system. Up until this year, the assessment cost the same for companies or organisations of all sizes – just £300. Now, though, the prices vary depending on the amount of employees. After all, the bigger an organisation, the more changes need to be made, and assessments will take longer for them.
Talking about the change, Anne W, the NCSC’s Head of Commercial Assurance Services, said, “While Cyber Essentials is designed to help any organisation attain a minimum level of cyber security, the assessment process can be quite complex. We want to continue to ensure this important scheme remains accessible to every business, no matter their size.” Micro organisations, or those with nine or less employees, will still pay £300. Small organisations, with 10-49 employees, will have to pay £400. Medium-sized organisations, or those with 50-249 employees, pay £450. Finally, organisations with over 250 employees will now have to pay £500 for the assessment.
Changes for remote workers
Many of the updated requirements concern those working from home, reflecting the changes in the workplace landscape over the past couple of years. According to the scheme’s requirements, anyone working from home for any period of time is classed as a ‘home worker.’ Home workers’ devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, will now fall under the scope of Cyber Essentials, and will need to be secure enough to pass the certification assessment. In fact, all devices used to access your data or services will be in scope, too. However, home workers’ routers won’t be in scope, so any firewalls must be present on their devices rather than the router. The one exception to this is if the business or organisation has provided the router – in this case, it will be in scope too..
Changes for cloud services
All cloud services are now fully integrated into the Cyber Essentials scheme, meaning that your organisation will be held responsible for making sure that controls are implemented to protect any data that’s being hosted on the cloud. Users will need to check the cloud services that they’re using and ensure that they meet the standards of the Cyber Essentials standards.
Multi-factor authentication, or MFA, must also be used by any accounts that can access the cloud services. MFA makes accounts more secure, as rather than just entering a password, the user has to provide more than one method of verification. Four methods are accepted by the updated requirements, including: a known or trusted account, a physically separate token, a managed enterprise device, and an app on a trusted device.
Other changes to note
There are also a number of smaller updates that need to be implemented. From now on, if they want to pass the assessment, departments will no longer be allowed to pick and choose which software updates they use. All high and critical updates or patches, to both software and devices, will need to be installed within 14 days, and automatic updates should also be enabled. All servers, which includes virtual servers, will now fall under the scope of Cyber Essentials, as will thin clients (or ‘dumb terminals’ capable of accessing a remote desktop). Separate accounts must also be used whenever accessing an administrative account.
While it might seem like a lot of work, all of these new requirements are necessary for those looking to pass the Cyber Essentials assessment and obtain the new certification. Only then will you be able to prove to other departments, organisations, and even companies that your information is secure, and that you’re protected against all of today’s most common online threats.
New police officers, with Councillor Jas Athwal, Leader, London Borough of Redbridge (Photo: Andrew Baker)
An East London borough has adopted a pioneering, community-based approach to prevent and manage crime. In a move which could be replicated across the country, the London Borough of Redbridge is the first local authority to give residents a real say in shaping services, policies and budgets aimed at improving community safety.
Following the biggest public consultation in its history, Redbridge Council last year identified the issues that most concern residents and established an independent Community Crime Commission of 16 local people with personal experience of the issues, to advise on ways to tackle them.
The initiative was welcomed by local residents as a means of giving them a voice on issues which can blight daily life in the borough. Commissioner Taiwo Ademola commented at the launch of the Commission: “This is an amazing opportunity to make real, tangible change, here in my local community.”
Public engagement was further deepened with the setting up of a 60-strong panel of local residents, the Community Voice, designed to be representative of Redbridge as a whole. Panel members were invited to comment on the key issues as the evidence-gathering process gained momentum.
The Commissioners’ investigations uncovered a series of systemic factors undermining efforts to create a safer community including agencies not working effectively together, artificial thresholds for support that mean young people don’t get help early enough to protect them from criminality, and low levels of confidence amongst residents that things can improve.
The Commissioners’ findings have now been published in a wide-ranging report which makes 48 recommendations on anti-social behaviour, burglary, domestic abuse, violence against women and girls, and drugs and street violence. As well as specific actions targeting each area, the Commission is calling for a new, system-wide approach based on a shared long-term vision. They want to see a multi-agency commitment to change, meaningful public accountability for progress and a significant improvement in the quality and consistency of communication between service providers and with residents.
The report emphasises the need to use existing resources more effectively, co-locating service providers and working closely with local people to design the services they need, making them easier to access and more responsive to residents’ needs.
Redbridge Enforcement Hub (Photo: Justin Thomas)
Along with its partners, including the Metropolitan Police, the Council has already responded to the report. In addition to restructuring and reprofiling resources to meet the recommendations, a budget of £1.2 million has so far been committed for 2022, with additional investment expected as initiatives are developed.
Several of the Commission’s recommendations focus on better neighbourhood policing, joined-up services, and working more closely with local communities to win back public confidence. As a result the Council is expanding its ‘enforcement hubs’. These fixed and mobile walk-in centres have been established in two areas in advance of roll out across the whole borough. They provide a dedicated space where people can get help and advice directly from the police and enforcement officers.
The Chair of the Community Crime Commission, Dr Javed Khan OBE, said: ‘Agencies must work more closely together, rapidly sharing information, and must be much better connected to the communities they support. Otherwise, people fall through the cracks. The enforcement hubs are a good example of this approach, as they bring services together and they take those services to where people are within the community, making it easier for residents to access them.’
Other recommendations from the Commission, on which the Council and its partners are already working, include:
The deployment of 25 new police officers as part of the Town Centre Safety Team
Support for young people before they fall into criminality, with activity in secondary schools to prevent gang membership and anti-social behaviour
The establishment of a new youth hub and mentoring schemes for young people
A change to police policy to ensure every victim of a burglary is offered a police visit
Additional operational staff for the 24/7 CCTV centre
Seamless support for victims of domestic abuse with the provision of a new ‘single front door’ and a single phone number
Workshops for young people on safety
Dr Khan said: ‘Fresh, practical ideas for solving difficult problems come from the people who live with those problems every day. This process, of genuine community involvement in tackling crime, has been ground-breaking. We are pleased to see that the Council is already acting on our recommendations.’
The Leader of Redbridge Council, Jas Athwal, said: ‘This process represents a step-change in how local people can engage with public services. Their experiences of what we do and their ideas on how we can better work together will help to create a safer borough. We are now focusing on the issues we know concern them, including women’s safety, and access to the police and other services.’
No child is to be left behind says edtech charity LGfL
As the Omicron variant surges and schools nationwide prepare for further disruption, potential closures, and a possible return to remote teaching and learning in 2022, edtech charity LGfL-The National Grid for Learning is once again stepping up support by offering thousands of Chromebooks, procured as part of its successful #BridgeTheDivide initiative, below-cost, to help schools ensure no child is left behind during this terrible pandemic. For what is believed to be a first for the UK education market, Chromebooks will be available from just £99.99. “How have we done this?,” said John Jackson, CEO, LGfL. “We’ve been using funds raised from other initiatives and ploughed them back into education.”
“You might think that below-cost devices would be as far as one charity could go, but we have once again gone one step further by providing buy-now pay-later options,” said John. “Schools purchasing devices can now choose to be invoiced in April 2022. Our thinking is this would help those in areas of deprivation to achieve the learner-to-device ratios they require, without the financial constraints of an upfront bill.”
By increasing learner-to-device ratios, these Chromebooks offer significant benefits not just in relation to the continued learning through remote methods, but also for everyday opportunities to teach and learn in different and more effective ways. They build students’ digital literacy skills and independent learning and enable schools to adopt a hybrid approach to teaching and learning, as schools like Whitefield Primary School in Liverpool found.
“As the Headteacher, the impact of working with LGfL over the last two years has been very significant,” said Jill Wright, Whitefield Primary School. “We felt safe in the knowledge that we were getting best value and used the #BridgeTheDivide scheme to secure Chromebooks for all our children in years four, five and six. It also meant that we had access to a wide variety of online tools too, which had a very positive impact on the teaching and learning in school.
“When children were forced to work remotely we were also able to provide extra devices to families with multiple children, provide access to teaching and learning, prevent the children from feeling isolated, help them avoid discord with their siblings and support their parents. We could see who was logging on, ensure that they were safe, chat to them online, send their work back to them and maintain a good relationship with the children and their families.”
LGfL’s initiative is not just about providing the lowest cost devices for schools and students, but providing a holistic approach to tackling the digital inequalities exacerbated by this ongoing pandemic. Through its partnership with Google, LGfL has been able to provide free on-demand live support to give educators the opportunity to acquire the skills required to harness the full capabilities and effectiveness of cloud-based teaching and learning via Chromebooks.
Through its #BridgeTheDivide initiative LGfL has already delivered over 200,000 new and recycled devices to schools, at a fraction of the cost of the government’s scheme, saving schools an estimated £7M to date. Most importantly, it has enabled children to learn and progress in spite of the pandemic.
“There are 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK – we simply cannot sit and watch the 18 month attainment gap between the haves and have nots widen further,” said John, who is urging Local Authorities in areas of high deprivation to fund laptops for children who do not have access to remote teaching and learning at home.
“It’s time that we all stand together to help schools during this continuing crisis and the devastation and growing social divide that it creates, to build brighter futures for ‘all’ our young people,” said John Jackson.
Like many countries around the world, the U.K. is familiar with following trends that originally emerged in the U.S. It’s a long-standing idea, amplified in recent years by increasing globalisation and the impact of digital transformation on society.
Take cybersecurity, for example, where the U.S. has been at the forefront of some of the highest-profile incidents and attacks on public sector infrastructure. In recent years, the U.K. has experienced similar issues, most recently seen at the Foreign Office which was targeted by a serious cybersecurity incident requiring urgent support costing nearly £500,000.
It’s important for the U.K. public sector to keep an eye on the nature of emerging threats seen by their counterparts in the U.S. Doing so can play an important role in informing strategy decisions, particularly when cybercriminals and nation-state adversaries are constantly changing their tactics and where the volume of attacks continues to cause major concern.
For example, recent research has revealed across the Atlantic, the nature of risk for the public sector is changing, with external cybersecurity threats becoming the greatest concern—moving ahead of internal threats for the first time in five years.
More specifically, the general hacking community (56%) is now viewed as the largest source of risk, followed closely by careless/untrained insiders (52%) and foreign governments (47%). It’s interesting to note cybersecurity threats from foreign governments (56%) are responsible for the greatest increase in concern for public sector respondents.
Given the complex nature of the public sector, the nature of risk is far from uniform. For instance, U.S. state and local governments (63%) are significantly more likely than other public sector groups to be concerned about the threat of the general hacking community. In contrast, Federal civilian agency respondents (58%) are more likely to indicate careless insiders as a threat compared to the defence community (41%).
Looking more broadly, it’s perhaps not surprising to see defence respondents (68%) are the most likely to note foreign governments as a cybersecurity threat, compared to civilian (53%), state and local government (46%), and education (25%) respondents.
Detecting and Resolving Cybersecurity Threats
When asked about specific types of security breaches, the public sector’s level of concern over ransomware (66%), malware (65%), and phishing (63%) has increased the most over the last year.
However, time to detection and resolution have not improved at the rate of increased IT security threats and breach concerns. In fact, about 60% of respondents noted both the time to detection and time to resolution remained the same or worsened between 2020 and 2021.
The reasons behind this are varied, but lack of training (40%), low budgets and resources (37%), and the expanded perimeter (32%) due to increased remote work continue to concern public sector security professionals. Respondents also pointed to insufficient data collection and monitoring as a key impediment to threat detection (31%).
State government respondents (50%) indicate more so than local governments (25%) budget constraints are an obstacle to maintaining or improving IT security. Education respondents are the most likely to struggle to identify the root cause of security issues, hampering their ability to both detect and remediate such threats.
Using Technology to Fight Cybercrime
Given these trends, how are U.S. public sector organisations focusing their efforts to meet the challenges they face? Research respondents believe improving investigative and remediation capabilities, as well as reducing barriers to sharing threat information between public and private sectors, are their top priorities for compliance with the 2021 Cybersecurity Executive Order issued by President Biden.
More specifically, over 75% of public sector respondents note their organisations rely on a formal or informal zero-trust approach. Most public sector respondents are familiar with the principle of least privilege (PoLP), and 70% of respondents are either already implementing PoLP or will implement it within the next 12 months.
Most public sector respondents realise the importance of IT security solutions and prioritise their investments highly in the next 12 months, with network security software (77%) being the top priority. IT modernisation investment priority leans toward replacing legacy applications (60%) and migrating systems to the cloud (60%).
Clearly, public sector organisations are under huge cybersecurity pressure in the U.S. and here at home. It’s also increasingly evident a coordinated response to these issues has risen up the list of priorities for authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. As the nature of risk continues to evolve, drawing on the experiences, insight, and trends seen in other countries will play a key role in helping the U.K. public sector to detect, prevent, and mitigate future cybersecurity threats.
The commencement of new, twice-weekly rail freight service from Toton in Nottinghamshire to Valenciennes in Northern France for the global automotive manufacturer Toyota.
New international rail freight services have commenced from Toton in Nottinghamshire to Valenciennes in Northern France for the global automotive manufacturer, Toyota.
This follows the construction of a new, £2.6 million automotive transfer facility at DB Cargo UK’s strategic site in the East Midlands and £3 million investment by Groupe CAT in its specialist wagon fleet.
Following a series of successful trial runs, fully loaded trains carrying approximately 260 vehicles are now operating twice a week between the two locations – a movement which used to take five days by road now takes just 24 hours by train and reduces carbon emissions by 2,300 tonnes every year!
On the outbound journey, the new generation of hybrid Corollas manufactured at Toyota’s Derby plant are being exported to France. Toyota Aygo, Yaris and the new Yaris+ vehicles are being imported on the return leg, to ensure full utilisation of the new services.
DB Cargo UK’s Chief Sales Officer Roger Neary said the commencement of the services was a significant milestone after months of collaboration and construction by all parties involved.
“Freight belongs on Rail and this is a really exciting collaboration between DB Cargo UK, Groupe CAT & Toyota. It’s a win-win-win for all those involved and will see us deliver an efficient and environmentally-friendly rail logistics solution for one of the world’s biggest automotive manufacturers,” he added.
“Not only that, it has also seen us breathe new life back into a previously disused area of our strategic Toton site.”
Steve Reynolds, Managing Director of Groupe CAT’s subsidiary STVA UK, said: “This project is the culmination of four years’ work from conception through to implementation. It is a very exciting project for Groupe CAT, requiring resources from road, rail and terminals both here in the UK and in Europe too. To facilitate the project, we have signed a long-term lease with DB Cargo UK for the Toton rail terminal and have invested more than £3 million to refurbish our wagons.”
DB Cargo UK is currently the country’s leading transporter of finished vehicles by rail, much of which is conducted working in partnership with wagon owner & logistics specialist Groupe CAT.
It’s £2.6 million investment has seen the construction of a new vehicle storage compound spanning some 4.25 acres, along with associated loading and unloading facilities.
The work was undertaken by Britcon (UK) Ltd and involved the import of some 11,000 tonnes of construction material.
Over 800 metres of new track has been laid alongside the extensive storage facility and 1100 metres of road has either been newly constructed or widened to accommodate the car transporters now taking the Toyota vehicles to and from site.
Some 900 metres of security fencing has been constructed, five miles of white lines painted on the tarmacadam surface and several miles worth of cabling laid to accommodate the necessary on-site CCTV and lighting.
Construction started in late September 2021 and was completed earlier this month.
Roger Neary said: “Each train will carry the equivalent load of around 29 road transporters. The rail solution will not only reduce congestion on the UK’s Road network but will also generate significantly less CO2 emissions than if they were taken by road.”
Steve Reynolds added: “We have taken the opportunity to redesign key aspects of the wagons to ensure they could deliver the next generation of cars and match Toyota’s quality expectations. Without this investment and innovation, it would not have been possible to deliver the targeted environmental and lead-time benefits. We should also recognise publicly the excellent support and contribution to this project from Eurotunnel, Border Force and the DFT, who have all really worked hard to make this project happen”.
South Seeds raised beds, Glasgow – photo by Ryan Johnston
Land Reuse Month throws spotlight on redeveloping vacant sites
A month-long campaign will drive forward the message that the public sector has a key role to play in transforming vacant and derelict land across Scotland.
Land Reuse Month, hosted by the Scottish Land Commission, will support local authorities in addressing the ‘how to’ of tackling the legacy of derelict land and preventing further sites and buildings from falling into long-term disrepair.
Scotland has almost 11,000 hectares of vacant and derelict urban land – an area roughly twice the size of the city of Dundee – and almost one-third of its 5.4 million population lives within 500 metres of a derelict site. These disused sites can cause significant harm to communities, ranging from negative impacts on mental and physical health to anti-social behaviour and safety concerns. The public sector can lead the way in identifying the potential of these sites to be transformed into assets that provide real benefit to local communities, including much-needed greenspace for health and wellbeing, growing spaces, community facilities, and housing and business use.
Local authority and other public sector employees are invited to take part in four online seminars attended by Scottish Government Ministers, civil servants, environmental groups, community ownership specialists, land and planning experts, housing advisors and academics.
The sessions will be held virtually on the first four Thursdays in March and will encourage delegates to understand the opportunities in transforming derelict land, to collaborate with communities and other cross-sector organisations involved, develop relevant strategies, and how to help stem the flow of abandoned and derelict land.
The first session on Thurs 3 March will be hosted by Chair of the Scottish Land Commission, Andrew Thin, with an address by Minister for Environment and Land Reform Màiri McAllan, while Tom Arthur, the Minister for Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, will open and chair the fourth seminar focusing on the role of land in delivering national and local ambitions – including community wealth building – on 24 March.
Minister for Environment and Land Reform Màiri McAllan said:
“Land Reuse Month will provide valuable support to local authorities to unlock the potential in areas of unused land, and I greatly encourage all those with an interest to sign up to the online seminars.
“The Scottish Government is determined to transform vacant and derelict land across the country to create new green infrastructure and provide environmental, social and economic opportunities for local communities.”
Raised beds at Shettleston growing project 2 – photo by Ryan Johnston
“Through our £50 million low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme, launched last year, we are already breathing new life into some of Scotland’s most long standing derelict sites.
“The programme is now underway and will help the delivery of regeneration and inclusive growth, and the promotion of wellbeing and community resilience.”
The campaign builds on the recommendations of the Vacant and Derelict Land Taskforce, jointly created by the Scottish Land Commission and SEPA, to transform Scotland’s approach to vacant and derelict land.
Andrew Thin said: “We don’t underestimate the scale of the task in bringing back into use the countless derelict sites which are a remnant of our industrial past, but they have the potential to be a huge national asset.
“By bringing together prominent stakeholders including local authorities, decision-makers, policy influencers, land and planning experts, and other enthusiastic parties during Land Reuse Month, we can drive real change to the way we approach land using it as an asset that can contribute to community wellbeing and net zero carbon objectives.
“We want participants to be inspired and to better understand the ingredients needed for successful land reuse. We are delighted at the calibre of speakers attending highlighting the importance of innovation and collaboration in tackling Scotland’s legacy of unloved spaces.”
The seminars will examine proactive estate management, managing fragmented land ownership, the role of land in community wealth building, leveraging finance and investment, explore best practice and inspiring examples from local authorities across Scotland, and raise awareness of the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme.
The Economic Development Association Scotland (EDAS) will be partnering with the Commission to host week three, with the theme of ‘Activate your estate’ on Thurs 17 March.
Other Land Reuse Month participants include the Scottish Futures Trust, Green Action Trust, Development Trusts Association Scotland, and a wide selection of local authorities and NHS Trusts from across Scotland.
Launched in 2019, MAKE at Story Garden is a ground-breaking public studio for creative activity and collaboration in Somers Town and St Pancras in London’s Camden. A project evaluation published today by the Social Design Institute spanning the first 2 years of the project demonstrates how MAKE opened up lasting opportunities for residents to participate in arts and making activities – giving them agency in addressing local goals and challenges.
Using a value co-creation framework alongside standard monitoring data and KPIs to evaluate impact, the report describes a role for design in configuring people and resources for long-term impact. It presents new narratives on measuring the value of community-led and place-based initiatives and offers a framework for the sector to better capture and articulate impact.
A flagship project in UAL’s placemaking and community engagement activity, MAKE is a partnership project founded by UAL’s Central Saint Martins (CSM), Somers Town Community Association (STCA)/The Living Centre, Camden Council, and the developer Lendlease. It was managed by CSM from its launch to Summer 2021, when it transferred to full community management, led by STCA/The Living Centre.
Using design approaches pioneered by the Public Collaboration Lab at CSM/UAL, MAKE prototyped a model of equitable cross sector collaboration. It built enduring relationships between individuals and organisations that have catalysed further projects and impacts. For example, initial workshops developed by the MAKE team and Lendlease’s Loneliness Lab, led to other projects focused on changes to public spaces around Camden; including the design and implementation of parklets and public art in the borough.
Monitoring data in the report shows how MAKE performed against pre-set objectives focused on shared endeavour, community resilience and wellbeing, despite operating a place-based project through Covid-19 lockdowns. Between July 2019 and January 2021, the space attracted nearly 1700 participants: Camden residents of diverse ethnicities, occupations and backgrounds, in many instances working alongside CSM students and graduates. MAKE users reported multiple benefits around wellbeing and enjoyment, positive mental health and relating to other people.
Identifying that change can happen beyond traditional measures and time-specific outcomes, the research framework describes the project as an ongoing platform which allows value to build over time. It reports that MAKE’s purpose – and source of value – consisted in building relations and ‘enabling conditions’ for future opportunities, some of which could not be predicted at the outset. As a result, value was co-created through the network of relationships and resources produced when people came together to use the space.
Showing the potential to recognise benefit beyond the scope of predicted KPIs, this work opens up new ways of capturing impact and value, defined in terms of long-term stakeholder capacity building, instead of short-term efficiencies. For policymakers, charities and organisations looking for ways of working more equitably with communities, it demonstrates a way of working that creates capacity for future endeavours and opportunities; and introduces a methodology that can articulate this contribution.
The MAKE (e)valuation report is co-authored by Patrycja Kaszynska, Senior Research Fellow, UAL Social Design Institute, and MAKE’s project leads: Adam Thorpe, Professor of Socially Responsive Design at Central Saint Martins, UAL and Samuel Mitchell, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Central Saint Martins Innovation and Business. It aligns for the first time Central Saint Martins’ design strengths in ‘infrastructuring’ through participatory arts and design and The Social Design Institute’s novel approaches to (e)valuation.
CSM and Camden Council share a longstanding collaborative relationship, with several design-based public initiatives in the past 10 years supported by the Public Collaboration Lab, a platform for teaching & learning, knowledge exchange and research focused on social, service and policy innovation. The Social Design Institute’s core interest areas include value and valuation through design; and policymaking, design and public policy.
Quotes to GPSJ:
James Purnell, UAL President and Vice-Chancellor:
“MAKE has demonstrated that through engaging and listening to your stakeholders and freely exchanging ideas and learnings, you can create something with an enduring legacy. Now run by the community it was designed to serve, we should see this as a model for how organisations can collaborate to create a positive impact. Through the innovative evaluative work, we also have a deeper understanding of the value of this project – one that has not always been captured through traditional evaluative tools. We hope this project and report can inspire many others.”
Councillor Danny Beales, Cabinet Member for Investing in Communities, Culture and an Inclusive Economy, Camden Council:
“This evaluation report from UAL highlights the power of community-driven projects to build relationships between individuals and institutions, improve wellbeing and empower residents. MAKE at Story Garden has provided a valuable collaborative space where residents can come together to address social challenges, develop new skills and access arts and culture. Based in the heart of the Knowledge Quarter, MAKE is a prime example of how institutions can create opportunities for local people and help to build a more inclusive economy.”
Phil Gould, Euston Project Director, Lendlease:
“This project has provided incredible opportunities for learning and exchange by all involvedand a valuable lesson in the transformative power of creativity and making. The networks, projects, and partnerships that evolved from the workshops to tackle loneliness, for example, are a great testament to MAKE and the positive impact that can be made by delivering physical space that puts purpose and people first.”
Mrs Sarah Elie, MBE, Executive Director, Somers Town Community Association:
“Occasionally projects come along and you just know that there is more here than the fabric that creates the structures and the words that give it a face, because the structures and words are nothing without the residents that have taken it into their community and made it their space. MAKE is such a project and for that all the hard work was worth it.”
Dr Patrycja Kaszynska, Senior Research Fellow, Social Design Institute:
“This study explores the on-going process of value co-creation and how the people involved in this project interpret opportunities and both experience and influence change over time. The value of MAKE evolves through the life trajectories of those involved and the wider communal, organisational and institutional networks generated. This makes (e)valuating MAKE both exciting and challenging. What we can see is the need to innovate in evaluation approaches to go beyond outcomes and outputs-based models, to account for the fact that value is co-created beyond fixed boundaries.”
The UK’s globally unique deployment of a medical imaging sharing system called the Sectra Image Exchange Portal has expanded to a record reach, easing the flow of important patient information beyond hospitals and supporting the pandemic response.
A UK-wide digital medical imaging sharing system, the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, has expanded to cover 500 institutions – enabling the secure sharing of essential medical imaging across the NHS and with other healthcare providers. NHS trusts say the system has proven vital during the COVID-19 pandemic as many patients have been seen in alternative locations, and it is also helping them to work with computer-aided diagnosis specialists, teleradiology providers and even forensic investigators.
The Sectra Image Exchange Portal, or IEP, first launched more than a decade ago as a means to allow NHS hospitals to share patient x-rays, ultrasounds, CTs, MRIs, PET scans and other important diagnostic images from one site to another, without having to rely on burning and sending compact discs to each other via couriers.
Now used to share around 47 million images each week across the UK, IEP has been key for patients who move across geographical boundaries, or are referred to specialist centres, and has been particularly valuable during the pandemic as patients have been seen at alternative hospitals and COVID secure sites.
Susan De Four, radiology systems administrator at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which was one of the first hospitals to start using IEP in 2009, said: “IEP has gone from being a local image sharing tool to becoming the predominant way we share images institution to institution, even changing how we share images with patients. It has replaced the need to share using optical media which has unavoidable security risks, with a secure system where an image can be captured at one hospital and become available within minutes to specialists and multi-disciplinary teams in another organisation. This is especially important for critically ill patients so that we can get them on the right pathway without delay.
“COVID has also seen additional capacity provided to the NHS – patients have been imaged by private hospitals or the military to minimise COVID-related delays and maintain COVID-secure pathways. Effectively managing the patient journey through imaging while using this additional capacity would have been almost impossible to manage without IEP, which has allowed us to swiftly obtain images back from those providers and make them available for our healthcare professionals to act on.
“The system continues to develop. Our orthopaedics and plastic surgery teams use companies connected to IEP that make prosthetics or customised tools for operations. It means we can easily share images with the right experts so the next steps of patient care can happen.”
Now the cloud based system has grown substantially beyond its original remit, with the NHS accounting for around 50 per cent of institutions. Other organisations that have joined the network include teleradiology providers, private hospitals, and organisations that focus on areas such as 3D reconstruction and AI supported diagnostics.
Hospitals have even been able to use the system, where appropriate, to securely share images that help inform forensic investigations.
The latest user, Innersight Labs, a surgical planning platform, specialises in creating 3D models that help NHS surgeons to prepare for theatre, reduce the risk of complications and even make decisions on whether patients should undergo procedures.
Dr Eoin Hyde, co-founder of Innersight Labs, said: “It’s all about the ease of bringing in CT and MRI images that we then use to create 3D virtual models for surgeons to inform important decisions for patients. I’ve yet to come across a hospital not using IEP, which is an important arrow in our quiver in connecting to the people we can help. Even if a hospital hasn’t worked with us before or we haven’t yet set up a direct integration, they still have a convenient, secure and safe way to share images and that reassures their information governance team. That makes it easier for us to work with hospitals and ultimately help them to improve patient care.”
Jane Rendall, managing director for Sectra in the UK and Ireland, the company that provides IEP, said: “IEP has been an important system in helping healthcare professionals to review medical images that might not be otherwise accessible from their own imaging system. Hospitals no longer need to rely on sending images via CDs, which might get lost or delay important decisions. But it has become much more than that, and even though more and more parts of the NHS are taking regional approaches to imaging technology, IEP has evolved considerably over the last decade to remain relevant and support patient care in new ways. I’m really excited to see how it will develop in the future.”
The Bristow & Sutor Group has announced they will be the headline sponsor of the maiden CIVEA awards night and dinner, part of the forthcoming annual CIVEA Conference.
Reflection & Collection, the past, present and future of enforcement is set to be held in London at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden on Thursday 21st April 2022. The annual enforcement networking event has expanded this year to include an awards ceremony for the first time, which will celebrate and recognise the ongoing efforts, commitment and success of leading industry organisations and personnel.
CIVEA is the principal trade association representing enforcement firms across England and Wales. Reflection & Collection will showcase the huge strides that have been taken in enforcement operations in recent times, building upon the regulatory reforms of 2014 and demonstrating the dynamic and proactive support provided to central and local government clients, including responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to being headline sponsor at the awards dinner, Bristow & Sutor will be directly sponsoring the Tier 3 Innovation in Enforcement category. The company will be submitting entries themselves into other independently judged categories that will be up for grabs on awards night.
All CIVEA members, including Bristow & Sutor, are required to follow a strict code of conduct, which exceeds statutory requirements and the National Standards. Compliance with this code is regularly assessed by the independent auditing of members and Bristow & Sutor recently passed their audit, scoring a flawless 100% in the process.
Emma Watson, Head of External Communication at Bristow & Sutor, said: “We are delighted to be the headline sponsor of the first-ever awards evening and dinner at the upcoming CIVEA conference. Our business was incredibly proud to score 100% in our recent CIVEA audit and we are keen to build on this result by showcasing further examples of brilliance from the past year, both from ourselves and amongst our peers across the enforcement industry. The impact of CIVEA and other industry events like this cannot be overstated, as seen by the response to The Money Charity, who joined our stand at the recent IRRV Annual Conference and obtained 53 separate nominations to support local community projects. This highlights the incredible networking opportunities made possible when the industry comes together in this way. We look forward to encouraging and facilitating similar conversations at the CIVEA Annual Conference, as well as celebrating the incredible outcomes businesses have achieved over the past year in areas as diverse as technology, social value and communication during the awards.”
Russell Hamblin-Boone, CEO of CIVEA, told GPSJ: “The inaugural industry awards are an acknowledgement of the huge advances that reflect modern enforcement practice. Enforcement agents operate discreetly in partnership with government agencies and the awards are an opportunity to showcase the best of our industry. Bristow & Sutor has always been a progressive business and its support for the awards is an indication of its commitment to excellence in government debt recovery.”
Bristow & Sutor has over 44 years of experience in the collection of local council tax, non-domestic rates and unpaid Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs). The company is one of the UK’s leading players specialising in debt recovery and regularly encourages conversations between Debt Advice personnel and Local Authorities, utilising shared connections for the good of all involved.
Recent Comments