Business News

Lesters has announced it has invested £100,000 into the opening of a second warehouse to help it cope with a 120% increase in orders.

The large packaging specialist, which has recently recruited 15 new staff, has fitted out the 25,000 sq ft facility near its headquarters in Burntwood with flexible racking options meaning it has enough space to store over 2000 pallets.

An iconic Bodmin Moor pub immortalised by Daphne du Maurier has been sold. The pub, the Jamaica Inn, was sold for a reported £8 million to the Coaching Inn Group, who purchased the property from Allen Jackson.

The 18th-Century, 36-bedroom coaching inn near the A30, was immortalised in her best-selling novel of the same name as a place where wreckers and smugglers would come to dispose of their goods and try to avoid the excise men.

Birmingham legal and professional services group Ampa has announced 16% growth in its latest year-end results – before factoring in its two recent mergers.

In its 2021/22 financial results, the group – which includes full-service law firm for life and business Shakespeare Martineau, consumer champion law firm Lime Solicitors, planning consultancy Marrons Planning, uninsured loss recovery experts Corclaim and cyber security consultancy CSS Assure – has, for the first time, broken the £80 million turnover milestone, publishing a year-end result of £80.4 million.

Island Global Yachting LLC, known as IGY Marinas, is being acquired by MarineMax, Inc., the world’s largest recreational boat and yacht retailer. IGY Marinas owns and operates a collection of 23 iconic marina assets and a yacht management platform in key global yachting destinations, including St. Lucia, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.

Members of the pubic have less than a week left to vote for Birmingham as the new national headquarters for Great British Railways (GBR). Public voting to help choose the town or city that will be crowned the home of Britain’s railways officially ends on Monday 15^th August, with a final decision being made by the Government later in the year.

A Black Country manufacturer that has its products installed in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Shard and Birmingham’s iconic Rotunda building has posted a record year. Isaac H. Grainger’s, which is a market leader in the manufacture of raised access flooring pedestals, has seen a rise in sales after securing a surge of reshoring successes from abroad.

Local MP Gary Sambrook was invited to attend multi-disciplined engineering business adi Group‘s Kings Norton Head Office on Monday 8 August, to learn about the firm and its apprenticeship training programme, as well as to visit the premises’ workshop spaces and design areas. Welcoming him were key members of the board at adi, including Chief Operating Officer Paul Smith, and Group Strategic Account Director James Sopwith, as well as a group of adi Group’s talented apprentices.

Landlords of mixed-use premises should engage in forward planning on the position of what are known as ‘qualifying tenants’ when it comes to eventually disposing of the property, says commercial property lawyer Sophie Bedwell.

Sophie from Clarke Willmott LLP says disposing of something over which tenants have rights could trigger a Section 5 Notice of the 1987 Landlord and Tenant Act leaving the landlord at risk of criminal prosecution and/or civil proceedings.

Landfill waste gadgets, heat pumps and wind turbines also make it into the top half dozen suggestions for what houses of the future will feature to help reach the 2050 government carbon target.

A survey among Birmingham residents questioning what the houses of the future will have to help reach net zero showed that 44% thought solar panels to generate electricity should feature, 39% would have rainwater collection devices and 31% would have electric vehicle charging points.

New Government action to tackle litter on cities' high streets was set out August 6, with Birmingham being one of the first cities to receive funding from Defra's Chewing Gum Taskforce

It is one of 40 UK cities - including Swansea, Glasgow and Belfast - which will receive grants of up to £70,000 to remove chewing gum stains as part of the Government’s new Chewing Gum Task Force, helping to reinvigorate our country’s towns and cities by funding efforts to clean up streets.

West Midlands Cycle Hire’s (WMCH) free offer to encourage cycle hire during the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games has seen over double the amount of bike and ebikes being used during the first week of the scheme compared to an average week.

Designed to help manage traffic congestion during the Games and offer more people a chance to get to sporting venues through active travel, the offer has seen over 13,000 cycles hired during the first seven days, which is over 6,500 more than was hired the prior week.

Birmingham Airport (BHX) published its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions report for 2021/22. The report reveals emissions rose 12% on the previous year, 2020/21, when operations were severely reduced by Covid.

Publishing a full GHG emissions inventory covering Scope 1, 2 and 3* emissions is a first for BHX.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer responded to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Report August 2022.

Nadhim Zahawi said: “Along with many other countries the UK is facing global economic challenges and I know that these forecasts will be concerning for many people.

The government must act decisively to offer fiscal support to businesses following today’s announcement by the Bank of England that interest rates are to rise to 1.75 per cent, their highest level for a quarter of a century. Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce (GBCC) said businesses were already struggling to hire and grapple with soaring energy prices and huge costs pressures.

Sports fans heading to the Commonwealth Games can access revolutionary tech to plan their visit around Birmingham this summer, thanks to a bespoke journey planning platform from Network Rail and award-winning transport tech innovator, Whoosh. Spectators can scan in-station QR codes at Birmingham New Street to access a wealth of network information tailored specifically to the Commonwealth Games, simplifying the customer journey experience. 

It was recently announced that the mortgage borrowing rules have been eased after the Bank of England scrapped an affordability test. If you're covering the news, please see a comment from a personal finance expert (Brean Horn from NerdWallet) below. I hope this is useful, but please let me know if you need any more informaion.