Taking place on Thursday 15 September, at the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, the East Midlands Bricks Awards 2022, a highlight in the business calendar, will celebrate the region’s property and construction industry while providing a brilliant opportunity to connect with local decision makers over canapés and complimentary drinks. The event, taking place from 4:30pm – 7:30pm, will also feature John Forkin MBE DL, Managing Director at award-winning investment promotion agency Marketing Derby, as keynote speaker, as well as award-winning mind reader, magician, and professional mentalist Looch, who will bewilder and astonish guests during the evening’s networking.

Tickets can now be booked for the awards event – click here to secure yours.

With nominations closing on Friday 19 August for East Midlands Business Link’s annual Bricks Awards, there’s not long left to submit your entries for the prestigious event – showcase your business, team and projects. Award categories include: most active estate agent, commercial development of the year, responsible business of the year, residential development of the year, developer of the year, deal of the year, architects of the year, excellence in design, sustainable development of the year, contractor of the year, and overall winner. To submit a business or development please click on a category link below or visit this page. Thanks to our sponsors:                                      

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Specialist library-based centres to support local entrepreneurs in Nottinghamshire have reported a record year after giving more than 1,000 instances of free business support to Nottingham’s start-up and small businesses owners – over half of them women. Business & IP Centre Nottinghamshire (BIPC) has seen a dramatic increase in activity, with 469 instances of business support delivered between January and March 2022 alone, following the recruitment of a team of advisors and recent openings of four BIPC locals in Bulwell, Beeston, Mansfield and Sutton-in-Ashfield libraries. BIPCs support local entrepreneurs to start, manage and expand successful small businesses, and from March 2021 to March 2022, over 1,000 attendees received free business support from the Nottinghamshire Centre. 39% of these attendees were aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to start their own business and 53% were looking to grow an existing business. The direct face-to-face support available at BIPCs can open up the path to entrepreneurship for anyone with a business idea, regardless of their background. Consistently, over half of those who use a BIPC to set up a business are women, 14% have a disability, and a third are from under-represented ethnic backgrounds. More than triple the national averages for business ownership in the UK, this diverse user base speaks to the accessibility and community-based ethos of this library-based support. The Nottinghamshire Business & IP Centres, led by Nottingham City Council Library Service working with Inspire, is part of a national network of over 100 regional and local Centres working with the British Library. Each Centre, including Nottinghamshire, is equipped with a core set of resources, such as up-to-date market research and business databases. These core resources are brought to life by BIPC Nottinghamshire’s tailored and highly individual programme of events, networking opportunities, workshops and one-to-ones, delivered in collaboration with local business leaders, role model entrepreneurs and community partners such as Potter Clarkson, Rogers Spencer, Summit Creative and Smorgasbord. Last year the success of Nottinghamshire was expanded to Bulwell, Mansfield, Beeston and Sutton-in-Ashfield libraries. This was part of a wider national expansion of library-based business support from 14 BIPCs to over 100 regional and local Centres across England, including in Nottinghamshire, thanks to £13million in Government funding awarded to the British Library. Liz Jolly, chief librarian, British Library, said: “At their heart, libraries are trusted spaces with professional staff who have a mission to connect people with information. From Glasgow to Brighton, our Business & IP Centres harness the power of libraries, bringing in expertise from the local community to help people from all walks of life turn an idea into a successful business. “Over the last year, the BIPC network has hugely outperformed its growth targets and helped to safeguard thousands of jobs through the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. We know that businesses started with the support of our libraries are nearly twice as likely to survive beyond three years than the national average. These remarkable results are living proof of the part libraries can and are playing towards boosting their local economies.” Councillor Pavlos Kotsonis, portfolio holder for leisure, culture and planning at Nottingham City Council, said: “With the recent launch of our BIPC local in Bulwell, it is exciting and positive that libraries can now play a new role in terms of harnessing the potential of businesses and make an important contribution to economic regeneration. “It now is up to us to make the most of the great resources available through our BIPC local and encourage as many people as possible to take advantage of what they can offer. We are delighted our offer has now expanded to Nottinghamshire and look forward to sharing the BIPC programme with Inspire Libraries so we can bring our strategies and service offerings closer together. “There’s no such person as a typical entrepreneur. Coming through the doors of our libraries are people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Expectant mothers, young people, elderly people, those who are out of work, people with disabilities, graduates, those with no qualifications at all. Anyone with a business idea – irrespective of their circumstance or background – is welcome to use our services and get help to get started or grow.”

Breaking down the “fear factor” around diversity via education and making adjustments to how new staff are recruited are among the practical changes employers can make to create more inclusive workplaces. These were some of the key findings by East Midlands Chamber and housing association emh group at a roundtable they jointly hosted to gather more intelligence about how to support businesses in establishing an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy. It follows research published in March that found 48% of East Midlands businesses have a dedicated EDI policy in place, with 68% saying it can contribute to successful business plans and 55% agreeing it was an important part of their leadership strategy. Better workplaces, improved decision-making and increased innovation were among the benefits cited by companies engaged with EDI. The roundtable, held on Tuesday at emh group’s office in Coalville, featured input from organisations including law firm Freeths, ER Recruitment, De Montfort University, manufacturer Hardy Signs and social enterprise Access Rating. Following on from the session, the Chamber and emh group will work with other partners to develop greater support for those wanting to do more to develop an inclusive workplace. East Midlands Chamber director of resources and EDI lead Lucy Robinson said: “It’s become increasingly clear that engagement with EDI is no longer just another bullet point in a company’s benefits package but is now business-critical. “At a time when four in five East Midlands businesses attempting to recruit are struggling to fill roles, we should be doing all we can to widen our labour pool by being more inclusive in our approaches to recruitment – beginning from how we advertise jobs and conduct interviews. “A happy workforce is also one that is more likely to stay in a job. We’ve heard lots about the ‘great resignation’ post-lockdown so creating a more inclusive work environment – where people are given a continuous education that encourages open discussion and breaks down the unconscious biases we all have – will go a long way to helping organisations retain their best people.” Chan Kataria OBE, Chief Executive at emh group, said: “Diversity is a unique selling point for the East Midlands, which has the most diverse communities outside London. “This is something we recognise at emh group, which is why we have engaged in a variety of initiatives in recent years – from supporting more women to take up boardroom positions to deploying the ‘Rooney rule’ to put forward more people from minority backgrounds in interviews for senior positions. “After gathering some very useful data, we now want to go beyond the numbers and understand how we can showcase businesses already succeeding in this area and share best practice so that our region can become a standard-bearer for the EDI discussion.”