STANTA Community Update
Read the STANTA blog here: smallbizguru.wordpress.com
In this issue all the latest events, dates and details:
- 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?
NEWS
Need a professional quality photograph? Elstree DV are offering a 30 minute slot for just £35 on May 27th in St Albans. For more info: click here.
Workspace: STANTA has offices available at Stanta Business Centre and offices/workshops at St Albans Enterprise Centre, ideal for businesses requiring storage or workshop space as well as offices. And hot off the press and just available, 1or 2 person units.
Deterred from exporting by travel costs? UK Trade & Investment with BA and Avis are offering 5,000 international return flights free of charge to small firms based in the UK and car rental firm Avis has also agreed to provide a total of 1,500 free car rentals.
Read more on this story here.:
Business Awards Opportunities:
St Albans District Chamber of Commerce Community Business Awards are now open for nominations - until 31st July. Find out more by clicking here:
And why not also enter: The Federation of Small Business Hertfordshire Business Awards - entry closing date is May 29th. 10 categories and a prize of £1,000 make this worth considering. More details.
Don't forget to visit the new St Albans shopping website: www.shopstalbans.co.uk. This initiative from St Albans Chamber of Commerce will help both shoppers and retailers. Help us make the site a success by logging on yourself and telling all your friends and contacts about the site.
Useful Sites:
Tax payment a problem? Call HMRC's business payment support line for advice: 0845 302 1435.
Finance: look at the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme on Business Link: www.businesslink.gov.uk
Looking at supplying the public sector? Click on Supply2.gov.uk.
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:
- Our next Free Legal Surgery is on Wednesday 12th August. The surgery is one-to-one and is held at STANTA Business Centre provided for STANTA Community members by S A Law. Please contact us if you would like to book a slot of up to 1 hour. Surgeries are usually held on the first Wednesday morning of each month and are booked up quickly.
- Our next Free Finance Surgery is Tuesday 8th September . Contact us if you are interested. It will be at STANTA Business Centre, provided for us by Lloyds TSB Bank. You can talk personally on a one-to-one basis to a banker about any area of business finance.
- 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.
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.
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 and is not related to the Women in Business Network). Events coming up:
- St Albans District Chamber networking: the next breakfast meeting is on Tuesday 21st July at the Marchmont Arms, in August there are no meetings. The September breakfast will be on Tuesday 15th at . Contact Lisa or Sue on 01727 863054 or e mail them on: office@stalbans-chamber.co.uk
- The next Women in Business event is on Wed 30th September; lunch at Chez Mumtaz with speaker Susan Heaton-Wright who will talk about using your voice in the most effective way. . For details about these events or how to join this networking group with no membership costs, e-mail Ginny on: ginny@stanta.co.uk or call 01727 837760.
- St Albans Networking Cooperative on Monday 17th August at 7.00 p.m. for 7.30 p.m.at the White Hart on Holywell Hill. This is a free event and will be a social evening . To find out more see the stalbans networking co-operative under groups on Linked-in or e-mail sabra@cercocommunications.com.
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 & Food Hygiene Qualifiactions
STANTA on-line training now available in conjunction with Learndirect Business and Certain Change.
- 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
- 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.
- 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 Learndirect 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
- 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.
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. These 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.
The next date is Thursday 11th June. The St Albans seminars take place at Barclays offices above
the branch in St Peter's Street.
.
Contact Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk for more details.
2. A wide range of FREE training courses for small businesses are available through Business Link
Contact Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk3. Under our Blogs Pods and Wikis seminar series, our next event will be in September in the County Constitutional Club, St Albans., just Contact Ginny on 01727 837760 or e-mail ginny@stanta.co.uk for more details.
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.
Becoming Self Employed
Wednesday 29th July Stevenage
Tuesday 7th July Hertford
Thursday 9th July St Albans
Monday 10 th August St Albans
Paying Employees:
Monday 3rd August St Albans
Self Assessment Tax:
Thursday 23rd July St Albans Tuesday 25th August St Albans
Setting up a Limited Company:
On-Line Filing for Employers:
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.
This email is sent in good faith, by Stanta. We have contacted you either because you are or were a client or because your details are in a database built from data in the public domain. Stanta are committed to the professional use of all direct marketing media; you can ask to correct information on your profile or request that your details be removed. If you would prefer not to receive these e-mails in future please accept our apologies and click here to unsubscribe.