THSP, one of the UK’s leading risk management service providers, are pleased to announce the launch of their new Employee Payroll Service.

Designed to support SMEs by taking the risk and cost out of payroll administration the THSP Payroll Service ensures companies meet their statutory obligations to their employees and HMRC with ease. 

A conference which will explore how buildings and spaces are designed to reduce negative impacts on the environment is to be held at Leeds Beckett University.

The international conference, Sustainable Ecological Engineering Design for Society (SEEDS) will take place on 17-18 September and is hosted by the Leeds Sustainability Institute at Leeds Beckett, with keynote speakers, workshops and presentations focusing on how to address the balance between the built and the natural environment.

CISRS has added another training centre to its Overseas Scaffolder Training Scheme (OSTS) – as the all-new UG Safety & Access UK (PVT) Ltd Chennai training centre gained accreditation this week.

The purpose-built CISRS OSTS centre in South India cost 1.8 million rupees to create and is a joint venture and long term partnership between Safety & Access and the UG Group in Chennai. It will provide tube and fitting, system scaffolding and scaffold inspection training to thousands.

NASC and CISRS exhibited at two key Network Rail safety events at the end of January, with the assistance of safety and training experts, Simian Risk Management Ltd. This is part of an ongoing NASC/CISRS 2015 events campaign which aims to spread the safe scaffolding message of both organisations.  

Online retailer Rainclear Systems, the UK’s largest stockist of metal guttering systems and rainwater goods, has just launched a fresh new website. The site at www.rainclear.co.uk makes navigating through the company’s huge range of guttering and drainage products and all the options on finishes, size and colour even more straightforward for their customers.

The National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC) will be returning to Ecobuild from 3rd – 5th March to host the Roofing Pavilion for the second year running.

Following the success of last year, the Pavilion has increased in size and will feature more of its Supplier Members (Manufacturers, Merchants and Service Providers). It will be supported by 22 companies surrounding an NFRC networking lounge.

The British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) is today celebrating welcoming its 800th member –Wakefield-based landscape contractor Freshscaped Ltd. This is a major milestone for the UK’s largest trade association for landscapers, grounds maintenance contractors, garden designers and affiliated industry product and service suppliers, and confirms its place as the representative voice of the landscape industry.

As we come into the new year, Scotland’s economy is showing continued signs of growth, and as a result, so is its construction industry. From July 2013 to July 2014, Scotland held 11% of the value of contracts awarded in Great Britain, making it the third highest in the country after London and the South West of England. The value of Scottish contracts accumulated to a staggering £6.8 billion, highlighting the future prospects within the industry.

In January last year, NAPIT predicted that 2014 would be the year of renewables and, with many positive predictions being made over the last 12 months, it seems this forecast was indeed accurate.

In November, a report stated that worldwide solar PV capacity could treble by 2020. This came at a time where the Solar Trade Association (STA) predicted that solar will become cheaper than gas by 2018. The positivity in the solar industry was evident throughout 2014 and solar PV installers can look forward to an even brighter year in 2015.

Following the recent news that the CISRS scheme has breached the 50,000 cardholders mark, the first scaffolder to be issued with a CISRS card back in 1979 has been in touch – Allan Craigen, Director of NASC member company Heywood Scaffolding Services in Lancashire.

Allan, who worked for a small building company in the North West at the time, was amongst the first cohort of trainees to attend National Construction College East (Bircham Newton) under the new CISRS rules introduced at the end of the 1970s.