The Business Ladder Blog

Congratulations to Stone & Co. of Stourbridge, West Midlands who trained through The Business Ladder via our Letting4Success and Property Agency Training channels.

The letting and property management agents were assessed for accreditation and, fulfilling our assessment criteria, we were thrilled to award them both our ‘Building Better Business’ and ‘Accredited Property Agency’ certificates.
To [...]

Small Business Rate Relief (SBRR) is set to increase from October 2010, which could mean big savings for small businesses. In England, small businesses are entitled to SBRR if the rateable value of their premises is more than £2,600 but less than £18,000 (or £25,500 in London).
Secondly, as well as reversing the previous government’s plans [...]

Entrepreneur Rory James MacLaren-Jackson successfully completed the 6.5km Crisis Square Mile Run 2010 last Thursday in a time of 35mins 40 secs (and he’s got the T-shirt and blisters to prove it!)

Thank you to everyone who sponsored Rory and helped him get well over the £100 target that Crisis were aiming for from each runner. [...]

Consumer group Which? has published the top 10 most useless financial products that essentially sucker consumers – from mobile phone insurance, to store cards, to loans.
A general caveat should be that not all such items will be useless in themselves, but poor value is often the problem.
Have a browse here at the Guardian.

A quick summary of the effect of the upcoming scrapping of HIPs (Home Information Packs) on property sales.
Estate agents selling property around the country should of course be aware of the influence of the new measures and the relevant cut-off date. However, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) – which formed part of a HIP – will [...]

Owners of businesses of all sizes that manage personal data should be extremely careful in relation to keeping their customer records.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has introduced fines of up to £500,000 for breaches of the Data Protection Act, which came into force on April 6 to try to prevent further serious breaches of [...]

The Queen dissolved Parliament today for the general election to be held on Thursday 6 May.
We shall see what the various parties involved promise in order to foster business and enterprise, and get the business community on board with their platform…

In keeping with our recent look at sustainable business, here’s an interesting upcoming event in London – ‘base‘ or Businesses and a Sustainable Environment.
“Changing to a more sustainable operating model is simply a matter of doing good business and base will give your organisation a head start.”

An interesting post from Officebroker.com saying that a survey by Aviva has shown that over half of UK small businesses have actively adapted their business in order to survive the recession.
Have a look at the article here.

A small piece from HRreview about ‘Blue Monday’, supposedly the most depressing day of the year for employees due to a combination of factors including weather, fading euphoria from the Christmas holiday season, and a full return to work and paying off debts. Reasonable suggestions include cancelling meetings scheduled to be held on this most [...]