STANTA Community Update

    

     In this issue all the latest events, dates and details:

     Under 'What help would you like?' we have added useful connections that may help your business.

• Legal and financial surgeries
• What help would you like?
• Networking opportunities
• Low-cost business training and food hygiene qualifications
• Seminars and Workshops including current HMRC workshops  
• The STANTA Community – how do I become a member?

Need Specialist Help with Legal or Financial Issues?

        Surgeries are free to Community members. See below to find out how to join. Here are the key dates   

1. Our next Free Legal Surgery date for May is still to be fixed. The surgery is held at STANTA Business Centre provided for us by S A Law. Please contact us if you would like to book a slot of up to 1 hour, as soon as a date is fixed. Surgeries are usually held on the first or second Wednesday morning of each month and are booked up quickly
2. Our next Free Finance Surgery is on Wednesday 30th April. It will be at STANTA Business Centre, provided for us by Lloyds TSB Bank. You can talk personally to a banker about any area of business finance. If you wish to book for May please contact us and we will let you know the date as soon as possible. Surgeries are generally held on the second Tuesday morning each month.
3. St Albans Credit Union – the Credit Union can provide small (up to £5,000) personal loans to STANTA clients for their business and are happy to talk to STANTA Community members at STANTA Business Centre about how to go about securing a loan from any source, and all issues around business and personal finance. By appointment.
4. Credit Crunch Week: As part of the NFEA's initiative to draw attention and help with the issues around a more difficult credit environment, STANTA, in addition to the above Finance Surgery, will host a special seminar entitled 'How to manage your relationship with your bank', provided by a former senior banker, on behalf of the St Albans and District Credit Union. The date is Thursday 15th May at 3.30pm at STANTA's offices. 

     For any of the above, call Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk

 

What Business Help would you like?

If you have not already done so, let us know by completing the attached questionnaire (our thanks to those of you who have). It will only take a few minutes and we are using this to look at how we might change our services to better meet your needs.

The government are committed to getting more small businesses supplying the needs of the public sector. If you would like to find out more, click on Supply2.gov.uk.

Want to get better-connected ?

Then STANTA can help with contacts with many local networking groups, and especially the St Albans Chamber of Commerce and St Albans Women in Business Group (which is administered by STANTA’s Ginny Cooper). Events coming up:

1. St Albans & District Chamber Breakfast and Networking: Tuesday 29th April at 7.30am at Kamillo's Restaurant, St Albans.  Guest speaker:  Druglink advising on what can be done to reduce the impact of drug and alcohol misuse at work. Contact Lisa on 01727 863054 or e-mail office@stalbans-chamber.co.uk  .
2. St Albans & District Chamber Breakfast and Networking: Tuesday 20th May at 7.30 am at St Michael's Manor. The speaker will be Mel Hilbrown of STANTA, talking about what small businesses can learn from the major business gurus.  
3. The next St Albans Women in Business event is a members' showcase evening on Tuesday 13th May from 6pm - 8pm at The Albany Restaurant, St Albans, followed by optional dinner. To find out more, contact Ginny on 01727 837760 or e-mail ginny@stanta.co.uk if you would like to receive an invitation. On Wed 16th July there will be alunch time meeting with speaker at the Fox, Harpenden.

Other Events:

        Federation of Small Business meet on the first Thursday of each month at the County Constitutional.

        Contact Mike Bourne. E-mail:fsbmike@fsbdial.co.uk

• Don’t forget, seminars can also be networking opportunities - see Seminars section below.

Training and Food Hygiene Qualifications

STANTA on-line training now available in conjunction with Learndirect Business and Certain Change.

1. We have launched our wide range of over 140 low-cost business training courses. You or your staff can complete these in your own time on-line, supplied by STANTA (as a LearnDirect business e-courses partner). And members of the STANTA Community get a 10% discount on all on-line courses. Go to the STANTA website: www.stanta.co.uk to find out more, or contact us on 01727 837760 or advice@stanta.co.uk
2. Are you a consultant or executive coach looking to extend your range, or for support material to strengthen and broaden your offering? Have a look at the Harvard ManageMentor - Harvard Business School material and support at an affordable price. Look at the mentoring page on the website: www.stanta.co.uk.
3. New! Are you in the food business? STANTA has been accredited as a Royal Institute of Public Health Examination Centre. This means that, as part of our Leandirect range of courses, STANTA can offer basic food hygiene training and qualification for which you can study in your own time, and take the examination on-line at STANTA Business Centre, at a time in normal working hours to suit the candidate. To find out more, contact us on 01727 837760 or advice@stanta.co.uk
4. And if you are starting up, and need more intensive and individual training, then Stanta has linked with Certain Change to provide their audio-based start-up sales and business development courses at a substantial discount to Stanta clients. These are supported by workbooks and telephone coaching and can be undertaken over a period to enable you to implement what you learn whilst learning. They provide a step by step process for new and developing businesses. Click here to find out more: www.stanta.co.uk or contact us as above.

Contact Ginny on 01727 837760 or e-mail ginny@stanta.co.uk.

Seminars

 

         1.  Do you know anyone thinking about starting in business? Then tell them about the FREE

          business start-up and planning workshops run by STANTA in conjunction with Barclays and the            

          National Federation of Enterprise Agencies. Barclays Let's Talk Starting in Business Seminars       

          run from 9.15 am to 3.30 pm and focus on thinking through and planning your new venture. If you

          are a pre-start or less than one year old business you also qualify to receive a voucher from

          Business Link for free business advice from STANTA or other providers.

          Dates are: Tuesday May 6th 2008

                          Wednesday July 9th 2008

                          Thursday September 11th 2008

                          Wednesday December 10th 2008

          All of the above will take place at Barclays offices in Upper Marlborough Road St Albans

     

          Contact Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk if you would like

          to book a place.

2.  Credit Crunch Week: As part of the NFEA's initiative to draw attention and help with the issues around a more difficult credit environment, STANTA, in addition to the above Finance Surgery, will host a special seminar entitled 'How to manage your relationship with your bank', provided by a former senior banker, on behalf of the St Albans and District Credit Union. The date is Thursday 15th May at 3.30pm at STANTA's offices. 

3. Do you want to get more business stimulated by the web, but not sure how you can go about it?

Following our successful seminar on “Blogs, Pods and Wikis” about using the web to develop your business, several people asked for the next stage. They found that this session opened up new possibilities for developing their business, but now they wanted to know more about how to develop specific aspects of these approaches to market. STANTA has therefore worked with Cerco Communications and FL1 Solutions to provide a session on key areas that were introduced in the original seminar. For the original seminar, Cerco and FL1 kindly provided their time free: clients simply paid for the cost of venue and food. To ask them to do so much more, we need to cover the costs of their time, but we are still keeping costs to a minimum.The market rate is more than £200 for a half-day specialist seminar but we are charging £40. Price includes morning tea/coffee/biscuits and buffet lunch plus presentation copy and notes. We are also keeping the groups small – 12-20 people – to enable the maximum individual input.The sessions will again be held at the County Constitutional Club in Ridgmont Road, 9.15am for 9.30am start. Details are:

 

Friday 9th May : How to create Blogs, Podcasts and Vlogs - learn how to do it like a pro!

Friday 13th June: Search Engine Marketing - Learn how to improve your ranking .

Numbers are limited so if you would like to come along, so act as soon as possible!
Contact Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk

 

4. Worried about the year end return, or handling payroll, or self-assessment? Tax doesn’t need to be taxing! And to prove it HMRC run a number of free workshops to help you get it right.

Being Self-employed:   22nd April, 19th May, 17th June    Hemel Hempstead

                                     1st, 15th May, 13th June                St Albans

Employers Year End Returns:

                                     24th April, 12th May                Hemel Hempstead

                                     3rd, 29th April                          St Albans

Paying Employees:       8th May, 20th June                  Hemel Hempstead

                                     23rd May                                  St Albans

Self Assessment Tax:    21st May, 12th, 27th June         Hemel Hempstead

                                     7th May, 18th June                   St Albans

                                                 

To find out more, contact HMRC on 01442 437401

 

How you can join the STANTA Community

Clients who bring STANTA a Business Link voucher automatically become a member of the Community for 12 months which entitles you to use the free advice service as you need it and to the other benefits of community membership.

These vouchers help fund our free service and are currently only available for businesses in their first year of trading. As STANTA no longer receives income from any external source for any other support given, there does need to be a basic charge for others wishing to start or continue to use our advice and other services.

In order to ensure that in particular our one-to-one advice service can be available as required and not rationed, we intend to keep this to a single payment of £70 per annum for membership of the STANTA Community. And we are adding as many new benefits as we can for our members as you can see in this newsletter - free legal and financial surgeries, discounted training opportunities and low cost seminars. We will try to add other services: your feedback from our research (see “What Business Help would you like?” above) will help us decide what we offer in the future.

Stanta is an acronym for St Albans Enterprise Agency Ltd (Reg No 1789726), Stanta Services Ltd (Reg No 2202645) and St Albans Property Services Ltd (Reg No 4952442 - VAT No 842690024). All three companies are registered at Companies House Cardiff. Stanta, Suite 19 Stanta Business Centre, 3 Soothouse Spring, St Albans, Herts, AL3 6PF. Tel: 01727 837760. Registered Office: Gloucester House, 72 London Road, St Albans, Hertfordshire AL1 1NS.

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