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Businesses celebrate at North Worcestershire Business Awards
Business leaders from across North Worcestershire attended the second business awards ‘celebrating people at the heart of business’ in the area. Seven winners took home crystal trophies from the prestigious awards dinner held at Hogarths Stone Manor on Thursday 25 November. Read the full story View the photo gallery See the highlights video
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Award success for the Bird Box
The Bird Box community space in Bromsgrove won Regeneration Project of the Year at the prestigious 2021 Insider West Midlands Property awards last month.
Designed by ONE Creative environments (ONE), on behalf of NWedR and Bromsgrove District Council, the Bird Box was launched in August 2020 and has transformed the unused site on St John’s Street in Bromsgrove centre into a temporary public realm and mixed-use community destination which is bringing a hive of activity into this central location.
Named after a feature carved into many of the existing Bromsgrove shopfronts, the Bird Box was designed to provide a flexible space for ‘pop-up’ and mobile businesses giving opportunities and support to start-ups and local entrepreneurs. It includes a range of community facilities including a stage, creative seating and open areas which during COVID-19 is providing outdoor social distancing space for small retail outlets which has been well received by local people.
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Wyre Forest House to host tech boot camp for the county
A bootcamp set to kick-start a new wave of eco-friendly technologies has been given the green light.
Wyre Forest District Council’s proposal to give businesses in Worcestershire the tools and knowledge they need to successfully enter the growing green sector has been awarded £522,750 from the UK Community Renewal Fund.
The 90-day Cleantech Bootcamp, delivered by Betaden and overseen by Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership, is aimed at both start-up and scale-up businesses in Worcestershire.
The pilot programme will take place at Wyre Forest House and support the development of green technologies with a specific focus on how businesses can adapt to new markets and regulatory frameworks.
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Get the skills you or your business need to excel
Be the best you can be with STEM-Up, a free professional development programme that gives you access to the right training that you or your business need to grow.
You could be looking to learn new skills to help you nail that promotion, or be a business owner searching for the right courses to help your team develop
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New laws to strengthen national security
The government has published further guidance to help businesses understand their obligations under National Security and Investment (NSI) Act.
On 4 January 2022, the NSI Act will come into effect across the UK and the government will be able to scrutinise and intervene in certain acquisitions made by anyone, including businesses and investors, that could harm the UK’s national security.
Businesses and investors are encouraged to get ready for the changes and the guidance published today helps businesses and investors to assess whether the government must be notified of an acquisition. Mandatory notification will apply across 17 sensitive areas of the economy, including Artificial Intelligence and Civil Nuclear. Businesses are also encouraged to understand what to expect when they submit a notification form and go through the NSI notification and assessment process.
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Could you provide goods and services to the Commonwealth Games?
Business opportunities are being posted now, right through to the start of the games, with the bulk of tenders going out next year. Games organisers will be searching for everything from marketing support, stationary through to larger infrastructure projects.
Larger businesses that win these contracts are also often required to contract a proportion of the work to smaller, more diverse businesses via their own tendering processes.
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Christmas calendar feature
Jerroms in Bromsgrove are celebrating the season in December feature of the North Worcestershire business calendar. They said “We all know how important it is to play our part in helping to clean up our environment and is why the Jerroms Bromsgrove Office is committed to reducing our environmental impact and improve our environmental performance. We have already started to successfully adopt eco-friendly and sustainable business practices, and view this as an essential part of our business operations. We have introduced and invested in several measures that will not only help us in our journey to reduce our carbon footprint but also save us money.”
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Keep yourself and others well
As the winter months draw in there are many things we can be doing to look after ourselves and those around us.
Washing your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water is the best way to prevent tummy bugs, COVID-19 and other winter illnesses. If you can't use soap and water, wash your hands with alcohol-based hand sanitiser containing at least 70% alcohol, but it doesn’t kill all winter bugs, such as Norovirus.
When seeing friends and family please take a rapid lateral flow test before you go. Around 1 in 3 people with COVID-19 do not have any symptoms but can still infect others.
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New Sustain & Grow Grant
Grants of up to £15,000 providing up to 40% of project costs, are available to eligible Worcestershire SMEs operating B2B that can evidence the impact of Covid-19 across the business, have a project to help address the challenges brought by the pandemic eg diversification, improved productivity OR, have a project necessary to capitalize on opportunities created by Covid-1, have not previously received a H2HB grant
The Graduate Recruitment Grant
This grant is available to eligible businesses to enable them to create a graduate role for a recent graduate resident in the county. The grant will contribute 40% of gross salary costs for the first 6 months to a maximum of £5000.
Full information regarding both the Sustain & Grow and Graduate Grants please visit our website Here2Help Business | Worcestershire County Council. Initial interest in each grant should be made via submitting an Expression of Interest which is available to download from the appropriate webpage.
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How are you doing?
The ‘How are you doing Worcestershire?’ conversation has just launched across Worcestershire County Council’s social media channels. It aims to encourage people in the county to start to talk about how they are feeling in response to the pandemic.
It is an opportunity for residents to share their stories of how the pandemic has personally affected them, what they have done to cope, how they are feeling now and what being well means to them.
The campaign invites everyone to be a part of the discussion and join a new Facebook group, How are you doing Worcestershire?, a place to share ideas, chat and get support.
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COVID-19 news
The pandemic hasn’t gone away and on Tuesday this week the government issued new guidelines to help keep everyone safe. Face coverings have become mandatory again on public transport and shops in England in an effort to slow the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant - but not in pubs and restaurants. All travellers returning to the UK will require PCR testing.
If you would like to know more about COVID-19 rates across Worcestershire, please go to Worcestershire COVID-19 situation dashboard on the County Council’s website.
For all the latest information visit: When to self-isolate and what to do - Coronavirus (COVID-19) - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
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