NAA Update: Apprenticeships, Business Excellence Networking Meeting, Niche Vehicle Network, CENEX Low Carbon Vehicle event, and more…
Read Carol’s update about Apprenticeships, Business Excellence Networking Meeting, Niche Vehicle Network, CENEX Low Carbon Vehicle event, other funding bids, R&D Tax Credits seminar, and the new NAA website
Apprenticeship Meeting
It has been a very busy few weeks since my last newsletter contribution. We held our first Apprenticeship Meeting for employers, and we have been paying follow-up visits to each of the companies who attended. We will repeat the event on 5 July, so if you couldn’t make it the first time, please book the date in your diaries and advise Zoe that you plan to attend, or email Susan and she can arrange to come and meet you to discuss the apprenticeship opportunities at your facilities.
Business Excellence Networking Meeting
Last week saw our third Business Excellence Networking Meeting being held at Performance Springs, in Lytham. There was a good turnout and as always the tour of the facility took far longer with everyone’s questions! Our thanks go to Steve Williams for hosting the session and I am sure that if any of you have any questions on the implementation of both TS16949 and ISO 14001 Steve would be happy to answer them for you. I also think that everyone learnt at least one new item during our vital topics session on Agency Workers and Contracts of Employment and thank you to Guy Holden (no relation) of EEF for his contribution. Our next meeting will be in late September and will be held at MWS Distribution in Manchester; watch out for more details. Martin is developing our extension request for the Business Excellence project and all Business Excellence Members will shortly be receiving a survey; please take 10 minutes to answer the survey as this is your opportunity to influence and shape the project through to mid-2015.
Niche Vehicle Network
Between writing this and you reading it we will also have held our Niche Vehicle Network grant opportunity meeting and I hope that as a result of it we will be able to make several applications for the R&D funding that is available; the closing date is 31 July.
CENEX Low Carbon Vehicle event
I also need to finalise the delegation and stand details for the CENEX Low Carbon Vehicle event to be held on 5 & 6 September in the near future; so if you would like to be part of the NAA stand please contact me.
R&D Tax Credits seminar
We will be holding our third R&D Tax Credits seminar on 10 July and I am pleased to say that from the first two meetings we have seen some substantial claims being submitted to HMRC and, more importantly, being paid out – even for companies who had previously submitted claims. Come and listen to Dave & Lindsay from MPA to understand how you can maximise your tax credits.
Other funding bids
I hope that those of you who submitted projects to either RGF round 3, AMSCI stream 1 & 2 and TSB IDP7 or the Low Carbon Truck Demonstrator project are successful. There is another round of AMSCI stream 1 in September and the NAA will also be looking to submit a bid into the Employer Led Ownership of Skills later in the year for SMEs in the region; once we receive the prospectus will be looking for your feedback on our ideas.
New NAA website
Our new website should also be up and running by the time you receive this, see:
http://northernautoalliance.com
Please bear with us for the first few weeks, while we sort out any issues with the data transfer and also any hiccups you encounter in trying to access the site while the transfer occurs. You will see that Business Excellence has its own linked website and this will be shortly followed by our linked apprenticeship website.
Carol Holden
Chief Executive
