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
- Training
- The STANTA Community – how do I become a member?
NEWS
Free Access to Government Contracts:
For three years, supply2.gov.uk has advertised thousands of public sector procurement opportunities worth up to £100,000 — making the website ideally suited to small and medium-sized businesses.
The fee of £180 that was previously charged to search the site across the UK is now removed, providing firms with better access to public sector contracts to help their businesses grow.
Workspace: STANTA's offices at Stanta Business Centre are full at the moment but there are 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 recently available, 1/2 person unit
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.:
Don't forget to visit the 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 Wednesday 10th March. 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 second Wednesday morning of each month and are booked up quickly.
- Our next Free Finance Surgery is Wednesday 3rd March. 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 online 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 Business Womens' group (which is administered by STANTA’s Ginny Cooper). Events coming up:
- St Albans District Chamber networking: details of all forthcoming events are on the Chamber website: http://www.stalbans-chamber.co.uk/. Look out especially for the St George's Day lunch at Sopwell on April 23rd - always the height of the Chamber year and a great opportunity to entertain clients at a modest cost. This tends to get sold out quickly, so make sure you book soon.
- The next St Albans Business Womens Group (SABWG) event is a lunch at The Bangkok Lounge, Harpenden on Wednesday 17th March with Christine Brown-Quinn: The Banking Crisis Explained. Christine will explain what really happened and what it means for your business and personal wealth. For details about future 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 15th March at 7.00 p.m. for 7.30 p.m.at the White Hart on Holywell Hill. This is a free networking event. 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 Maree Atkinson on 01462 451124. E-mail: info@mareeatkinson.com
Don’t forget, seminars can also be networking opportunities - see Seminars section below.
- For details of other networking groups across the district, visit our website www.stanta.co.uk and click on the networking page.
Let's Talk Starting in Business
FREE business start-up and planning workshop run by STANTA in conjunction with Barclays and the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies. This is suitable for anyone who is thinking of, or has just started running their own business. These run from 9.15 am to 3.30 pm and cover the following topics:
- Sole trader vs limited company
- How to write a good business plan
- Sourcing finance
- Managing cash flow
- Taxation and VAT
- Marketing
The next Let's Talk training seminar will be on Tuesday 9th March at Barclays offices above the branch in St Peter's Street. There will be another one on May 11th if you cannot make this one.
Contact Ginny at STANTA on 01727 837760 or e-mail advice@stanta.co.uk for more details.
A wide range of FREE training courses for small businesses are available through Business Link
Contact Ginny on 01727 837760 or e-mail ginny@stanta.co.uk.
Our Blogs Pods and Wikis seminar series continue at the County Constitutional Club, St Albans:
Friday 16th April - Using on-line PR, RSS & article marketing & how to raise your business's profile
Friday 30th April - Advanced DIY Google Ads & Search Engine Marketing
More details to follow. Contact Ginny on 01727 837760 or e-mail ginny@stanta.co.uk.
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: Mon 1st March St Albans Wed 10th March Stevenage Thurs 11th March Watford Paying Employees: Thurs 25th February Luton Fri 19th March Stevenage Self Assessment Tax: Fri 26th February St Albans Thurs 18th March Watford There are other dates at venues further afield. There are also workshops on International Trade, The Construction Industry Scheme, Calculating National Insurance for Directors, Paying Expenses and Benefits, Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Payments.
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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