News Articles Archive - Page 153 of 158

We are delighted to invite you to our upcoming event, Supporting Local Talent, to learn how to diversify and strengthen your workforce.

Date: Thursday 19th November 2015
Time: 5:30pm to 7:00pm – refreshments available
Place: The Mayor’s Parlour, Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, London SW1E 6QP

There is a large pool of talented candidates within Westminster who have disabilities or health conditions, and often employers are missing out on recruiting the best person for their vacancies because they are not accessing them.

Come along to find out how we can help you recruit local residents to make a positive impact on their lives and your business. You will also learn about how you can attract a wider pool of candidates, and access grants to help you make reasonable adjustments for candidates if needed.

This is also a fantastic opportunity to meet other Westminster businesses and hear from Councillor Rachael Robathan, Cabinet Member for Adults and Public Health, and Councillor Iain Bott, Deputy Cabinet Member for Adults and Public Health.

RSVP to Sylvia Kankasa, Specialist Workplace Coordinator, Cross River Partnership at skankasa@westminster.gov.uk.

The FREVUE six-monthly partner meeting was held in Milan on 1-2 October 2015 and concluded with a press conference at the EXPO 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”.

The newly appointed project co-ordinator, Tanja Dalle-Muenchmeyer (Cross River Partnership) and representatives from Milan, Madrid and Stockholm introduced the project and some of its freight electric vehicle demonstrations to the journalists.

European cities continue to grow, and traffic generated by the logistics sector grows too, causing pollution and noise, explained Tanja Dalle-Muenchmeyer. The FREVUE project aims to show that combined with the implementation of urban consolidation centres, clean and quiet electric freight vehicles are viable alternatives to conventional diesel ones.

Electric and smart logistics in Madrid and Stockholm

“Madrid is a lively city, and delivery of food products to all of its bars, restaurants and stores has become a complicated activity,” explained Sergio Balaguer. “With the FREVUE project, we have created a large logistical center and we have involved the main actors in food delivery, in particular the food group Calidad Pascual and logistics companies SEUR and TNT.”

“Stockholm has a complicated layout, because it covers fourteen islands linked by fifty-four bridges, and these require a great effort, logistically speaking,” Elin Skogens continued. “With FREVUE, in addition to the consolidation center and the electric vehicles, we have reduced delivery traffic thanks to inverse logistics, meaning the recovery of returns related to the product deliveries.”

Pharmaceutical deliveries with electric vehicles in Milan

“Because of the nature of their activities, pharmacies require many daily deliveries, up to five per day,” explained Maria Berrini. “In the scope of FREVUE we are concentrating for now on downtown pharmacies around Area C (Milan’s low emission zone). We have achieved collaboration with all the players involved, meaning associations in the category of pharmaceutical couriers Confcommercio and Eurodifarm, who have made their warehouses available”.

To read the article on the EXPO 2015 website, please see here.

The FREVUE (Freight Electric Vehicles in Urban Europe) project is an urban e-mobility project supported by the European Commission. For questions or comments, please contact the FREVUE Co-ordinator, Tanja Dalle-Muenchmeyer, on tdmuenchmeyer@westminster.co.uk

http://frevue.eu/

Fit for the Future Network in partnership with Clean Air Better Business invites you to an event on: Sustainable Procurement strategies, policies and practices. Click here to register for the event.

Date: Thursday 8^th October, 10am – 2.30pm
Venue: Morden Hall, Morden Hall Rd, Morden, London SM4 5JD

This event will explore key issues for professionals involved in developing and implementing sustainable procurement policies and strategies and enable attendees to share experiences or best practice with others.

By the end of the event attendees will:

Understand the importance of demand management when implementing a sustainable procurement strategy, with Michael Burke, WWF
Understand recent changes to the green legislation and how it impacts a sustainable procurement strategy, with Martin Garry, The Co-operative Group
Have considered the whole life cycle of a procurement process, specifically with regards to the air quality impact of logistics and transport
Discussed best practice for specific category management, with facilitated discussions on transport, IT, timber, print and catering. With Gavin Beat, Canal and River Trust, National Trust, Local Authorities and others.
Gained insight into the procurement strategies, policies and practices within a range of sectors, including public, private and non-profit.

The event is for:

Members of Fit for the Future Network from across the UK and partners from CRP’s Clean Air Better Business programme. Specifically, sustainability professionals, procurement managers or officers and anyone involved in the supplier chain process should attend.

Click here to register for the event.

Hooray! We have reached 100 followers on the Clean Air Better Business twitter page – @CRP_CABB.

As part of the communications strategy we set up the account to raise the profile of the programme externally and between project partners with the aim of sharing knowledge and promoting best practice.

We believe that ‘Clean air is better for business’ and will continue to provide a stream of news and updates in a digestible format to raise and maintain awareness and instil confidence amongst partners of the benefits of air quality initiatives.

If you haven’t already, make sure to follow us.

Almost 100 delegates representing commercial, business vehicle, freight, public sector and private car fleets from London attended the CRP-organised business engagement event held in the London Living Rooms, City Hall on 3^rd September 2015. This event was in support of London’s application for the Office of Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) Go Ultra Low City Scheme led by the Greater London Authority and Transport for London.

Cross River Partnership’s role within this event was to secure attendance by key industry players with the aim of gaining their endorsement of London’s application to OLEV. CRP facilitated the event and is providing feedback from industry to enhance the bid.

London’s vision is to become an ultra low emission vehicle capital as set out within the Ultra Low Emission Vehicle Delivery Plan,. The bid is for £20 million in funding from OLEV to make this vision a reality.

The key themes and asks from business at the event included:

the suggestion that GLA/TfL enter into a consortium with a manufacturer and end user to develop solutions;
the private sector’s appetite for more trials, demonstrations, information/data about best practice and case studies;
general support for the idea of charging hubs and strong desire for rapid and inductive charging;
the desire for incentives, including financial/loan assistance;
app based technology to indicate where charging infrastructure is located, with assurances as to its serviceability; and
perhaps most importantly, willingness to see strategic bodies flex their regulatory muscles in various ways to enable business/industry to do what it must!

What is next? – The bid builds on the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) policies with wider proposals to bring about a transformation for commercial fleets, business vehicles and private car fleets in London.

The deadline for submission of the bid is 2^nd October 2015.

CRP will continue to work closely with Transport for London, the Greater London Authority and London Councils to help deliver London’s ultra low emission future.

Great news! Cross River Partnership has submitted an application on behalf of the central London sub-region for the Mayor’s Air Quality Fund round 2.

Cross River Partnership’s application incorporated proposals from 12 BID and 4 local authority partners, which is a positive indication of how enthusiastic our partners are in addressing the poor air quality issue in London.

This new application is to expand on the interventions already being implemented by CRP and its partners with the Mayor’s Air Quality funded – Clean Air Better Business (CABB) programme. Achievements to date include:

Mainstreaming Air Quality issues within Business Improvement District agendas

500 Air Quality toolkits designed to provide businesses with example interventions of what they can do to tackle the air quality problem
A business-facing air quality widget (please see an example here)
Delivery and Servicing Plans being piloted by up to 7 large businesses across central London
Encouraging the uptake of ultra low emission vehicles through a business engagement event for London’s ‘Go Ultra Low City Scheme’ funding application
Zero and Low emission directory of suppliers
Supporting active travel and exposure mitigation through re-routing travel (Wellbeing walk and Pool bike scheme)
Communication campaign and promoting CABB activity via social media e.g. Twitter
Raising awareness amongst Private hire vehicle operators on air quality and offering ‘drive-style’ training.

The MAQF2 provides an excellent opportunity for CRP and partners to reap maximum rewards from the development time already put in for CABB and it also provides the chance to offer even more innovation and services, to business and residents.

Fingers crossed!.

CRP has been awarded over €90,000 to develop innovative approaches to improvements in city logistics across a number of European cities over the next 6 months, under our new project “Freight TAILS”. This funding will support the development of a larger bid (up to €750,000) for the project to be implemented 2016 – 2018.

This funding is awarded under the URBACT III programme.

CRP’s Freight TAILS was one of only 21 applications to be successful at Phase 1 from a total of 99 submissions. We received the following excellent feedback from the funders:

“The URBACT Freight TAILS project addresses the challenges posed by rapidly increasing freight movements, within the context of all urban logistics. It aims at the development of tailored freight management policies using the URBACT Integrated Action Planning methodology. The External Assessment Panel considers this is an excellent proposal, presenting very high quality content on all dimensions to be assessed and very high potential for successful implementation.” URBACT Secretariat

“Freight TAILS” Phase 1 is led by CRP in partnership with Maastricht (The Netherlands), Parma (Italy), Plascencia (Spain), and Suceava (Romania). Over the course of the next 6 months we will expand the partnership to total up to 12 European cities for the full Phase 2 application.

For more information on Freight TAILS please contact Charlotte Knell, CRP Project Manager, cknell1@westminster.gov.uk.

For more information on the other successful URBACT III projects, please go to http://urbact.eu/new-action-planning-networks-more-information-available.

CRP’s Ananth Murthy has successfully secured a permanent post following a competitive interview process, with Cross River Partnership’s accountable body Westminster City Council, as a Business and Enterprise Programme Manager. This appointment comes after Ananth has worked on the successful ERDF- funded Supply Cross River 2 project over the past two years, which completed its delivery in March 2015. The draft evaluation of the project shows that it has massively overachieved on many of the formal outcomes and made a real difference to the SMEs in the central London sub-region. Well done Ananth and all of CRP’s SXR2 project partners!

The GLA is in the process of commissioning a piece of research to measure the impact of BIDs in London. CRP has been invited to work alongside the GLA, the London Enterprise Panel, London Councils and BID representatives themselves to shape, manage and inform the research.

A comparison will be made with the results from the last piece of GLA BIDs Impact Research commissioned in 2012. The research results will also be important in terms of identifying what more BIDs can do within the context of rapidly changing economic, public sector, legislative, taxation, and political contexts.

The Mayor has published the Draft Central Activities Zone (CAZ) Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) for public consultation for a period of 12 weeks – from 15 September to 8 December 2015.

The draft CAZ SPG provides guidance on how to interpret and apply policies in the 2015 London Plan related to London’s Central Activities Zone and, where relevant, the North of the Isle of Dogs.

It includes guidance on matters including:

office to residential permitted development rights and the need for a co-ordinated approach to borough Article 4 Directions if the current exemptions for the CAZ, Tech City, North of the Isle of Dogs, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and the Royal Docks Enterprise Zone are removed
striking an appropriate balance between offices and residential in different parts of the Zone
promoting strategic clusters of culture, arts and entertainment uses/ activities and accommodating growth in retail development
enhancing the distinct environment and heritage of the CAZ with examples of accommodating growth through contextual change in CAZ
supplementary guidance on tall buildings bringing together work by the GLA and boroughs on Opportunity Area Planning Frameworks and Local Plans
guidance on identifying capacity for residential development in the CAZ without compromising strategic functions
implementation and delivery of essential new transport infrastructure, walking, cycling and use of the River Thames
interpretation of the London Plan CAZ Diagram and guidance on the CAZ Opportunity Areas.

The draft SPG can be downloaded here on the Greater London Authority website:

https://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/planning/consultations/central-activities-zone-draft-supplementary-planning-guidance

How to comment on the document:

Written responses should be sent by post or email to the contact details below:

By email – to mayor@london.gov.uk

By post (no stamp required) to:

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
(CAZ SPG)
FREEPOST LON15799
GLA City Hall, post point 18
The Queen’s Walk
LONDON SE1 2AA

All responses (emails and letters) should be received by midnight on Tuesday 8 December 2015

Please note that all responses will be available for public inspection.

Archives: News Articles

Supporting Local Talent Event – 5:30pm 19th November

FREVUE presented at the EXPO Milan

Event on 8th October 15: Sustainable Procurement strategies, policies and practices

CABB Twitter 100th Follower

OLEV Go Ultra Low City Scheme

Mayor’s Air Quality Fund 2 bid submitted

CRP Funding Success for Freight

Onwards and Upwards!

BIDs research

Consultation on CAZ Supplementary Planning Guidance