The government has announced how it will continue to help businesses when the current relief for energy bills comes to an end on 31 March. The new scheme gives eligible UK businesses a discount on high energy bills until 31 March 2024.

The new Energy Bills Discount Scheme is less generous than the current winter scheme and commits the government to spending less on the support it provides while still offering businesses some security.

For eligible non-domestic customers who have a contract with a licensed energy supplier, the government is announcing the following support:

• From 1 April, all eligible non-domestic customers will see a unit discount of up to £6.97/MWh automatically applied to their gas bill and a unit discount of up to £19.61/MWh applied to their electricity bill.
• This will be subject to a wholesale price threshold of £107/MWh for gas and £302/MWh for electricity. This means that businesses with energy costs below this level will not receive support.
• You do not need to apply for a discount, it will, as with the current scheme, automatically be applied to bills.

Announcing the scheme today (9 January), Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “My top priority is tackling the rising cost of living – something that both families and businesses are struggling with. That means taking difficult decisions to bring down inflation while giving as much support to families and business as we are able.

“Wholesale energy prices are falling and have now gone back to levels just before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But to provide reassurance against the risk of prices rising again we are launching the new Energy Bills Discount Scheme, giving businesses the certainty they need to plan ahead.

“Even though prices are falling, I am concerned this is not being passed on to businesses, so I’ve written to Ofgem asking for an update on whether further action is needed to make sure the market is working for businesses.”

You can read more from the government about the scheme here.

Some quarries and major construction companies might qualify for the intensive industries scheme, which is different from that mentioned above and has to be applied for. You can find out more about that here.

The maximum discounts and price thresholds for these larger users are:

• electricity – £89/MWh with a price threshold of £185/MWh
• gas – £40/MWh with a price threshold of £99/MWh

Anyone involved in the heritage sector is invited to join in this year’s Heritage Treasures Day on Wednesday 11 January to celebrate all that is wonderful about the UK’s heritage.

Heritage Treasures Day is a moment to share and celebrate inspiring projects and highlight rich and diverse heritage across the UK. Launched by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2017, it has grown each year. Last year it trended at second place on Twitter. Can it make first place this year?

You can take part by using the hashtag #HeritageTreasures and tagging @HeritageFundUK.

The Heritage Fund is encouraging people to post pictures and information about inspiring projects, winter walks in much-loved parks, gargoyles and other stonework on churches, favourite museums, stories about local characters… Anything, in fact, to do with heritage. Even if it is just that you have enjoyed reading about something, or have worked with people who have been absolute treasures?

To mark the day, the Heritage Fund is also offering heritage virtual backgrounds for computer screen savers and video calls that you can download. They feature projects that the Fund has supported with National Lottery funds, including Leighton House, Pembroke Heritage Centre, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, Gainsborough House, The Flow Country, Canterbury Cathedral, and Hillsborough Castle.

Find out more here.

Since The National Lottery began in 1994, National Lottery players have raised over £43billion for projects and more than 635,000 grants have been awarded across the UK.

For the love of God, please do something…

That’s the plea from Michael Poultney, the Managing Director of Portland limestone mining company Albion Stone, to his constituency MP.

What he wants something done about is geographic indications (GIs) for craft and industrial goods.

The European Union (and other parts of the world) use GIs to prevent manufacturers from outside a geographical area claiming their products come from that area in order to benefit from its reputation for the production of certain goods. Melton Mowbray Pork Pies are protected by this legislation, as is Champagne.

So far, in the UK and Europe that protection has been restricted to food and wine, but for many years (going back to before Brexit) the EU has been discussing extending GIs to include products other than food and wine.

The EU’s most recent study of GIs was published in 2020. It found that, on average, they doubled the value of a product when compared with similar products without certification. The study put an estimated annual sales value of GI-protected products at €74.76billion, with more than 20% coming from exports outside the European Union. In March 2022, 3,458 place-named products were registered. You can see them all here.

Extending GIs to non-food and drink products in Europe has been a tortuously slow process (and it is not concluded yet). It was being discussed at the turn of the millennium but gained momentum in 2014 when the EU opened a public consultation on the subject. That was, of course, before the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Stone Federation, the Minerals Products Association and English Stone Forum joined other organisations in Europe, including the pan-European EuroRoc of which Stone Federation GB is a member, as well as individual quarry operators and Natural Stone Specialist magazine in contributing to the public consultation by making the case for protecting the geographical names of stones such as Portland, Bath and Cotswold in the UK and many others across Europe. (You can read reports from the time here.)

As a producer of Portland limestone, which very specifically comes from the Dorset island of Portland, Michael Poultney was always a keen advocate of GIs and remains so.

The point of GIs is to protect the reputations of identifiable geographical areas for the production of specific products – in this case, stone – especially against products imported from other parts of the world. So, for example, a stone from India could not be called Portland stone.

With the extension of GIs in the EU to non-food and wine products starting to look imminent, Michael Poultney wrote, via his constituency MP, to George Freeman, Minister for Science, Research & Innovation, in August last year asking for the UK to adopt non-food GIs.

With the various ousting of Prime Ministers and Chancellors last year, and the subsequent frequent re-shuffling of ministerial jobs, the reply from the Minister, via the Member of Parliament for South Dorset constituency, Richard Drax, did not reach Michael Poultney until December.

When it did, it elicited the response from Michael at the top of this article. He says it "displays a breathtaking lack of understanding about the issues".

You can read the full reply from the Minister in the PDF below. It includes this sentence: “ln the absence of evidence showing any deficiencies in the current system, the UK's policy position remains to utilise trade marks.”

In Europe there were MEPs who also argued that trade marks were sufficient to protect products, but most concluded that GIs are better protectors of geographical intellectual rights, not least because a trade mark cannot be used to stop others using a place name. If they could, everywhere would be trade-marked and nobody would be able to use place names.

As Michael put it in his response to the office of his constituency MP: “Putting it really simply… you cannot get a trade mark on Portland Stone. We need the GI legislation that the EU are completing otherwise the UK will become a dumping ground for cheap and dangerous fakes.”

He has the backing for his cause of the Mineral Products Association (MPA), which has a dimension stone product group to which many of the leading UK producers, including Albion Stone, belong.

Jon Pritchard, Chief Executive of the Mineral Products Association, told NSS: “The Mineral Products Association understands the concerns this issue raises for natural stone producers in the UK and intends to take this up with the relevant government department to ensure that the interests of all our member companies are properly understood and appropriately protected.”

North American-based international stone company Polycor, which supplies stone to the UK largely from its French limestone quarries, has contributed to America’s first industry-wide Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for natural stone in the Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog.

Transparency documentation provides design teams with data to help them understand the carbon impacts of their projects.

Polycor is one of 18 of America’s Natural Stone Institute (NSI) members who participated by contributing lifecycle data.

Polycor has pledged to become carbon neutral by the end of 2025 (read more about that here) and says: “We are committed to making product transparency understandable and meaningful to assist with making greener and healthier decisions. It is the key to providing our customers with informed choices about our products and helping them understand our company's ethics."

With increasing awareness of the environmental impact of building and construction materials and the demand for transparency, EPDs are increasingly becoming a requirement for public and private procurement.

transparencycatalog.com

‘Tis the season to be jolly. But you might be wondering what there is to be jolly about.

If you won an award at the Stone Federation’s Natural Stone Awards at the beginning of December then perhaps you will still hold on to a feeling of joy about that. The recognition of excellence is always rewarding.

Or perhaps you were involved in one of the many projects recognised in the Chartered Institute of Builders’ annual Construction Management awards. Congratulations to one and all who were.

So... what can we aspire to in 2023? From what can we take sustenance to last us through January and February – those cold months; those short days?

New Year is a time to reset the clock; take-off in new a direction. Or even slow down.

A long-time associate and occasional collaborator of mine, Mark Aldridge, is retiring in December.

Mark is a fine, old-school draughtsman who has worked with many of us in the stone industry over many years.

He told me that after bobbing along from job to job since the pandemic, suddenly, when he announced his retirement, everyone needed him. Work flooded in. He turned down most of it because the decision had been made. Enjoy the retirement, Mark.

And no, I’m not intending to announce my retirement in the hope that work floods in. Although I could simply announce I had to postpone retirement because of new commitments, followed by another retirement date and so on and so forth until the lights go out or they turn off the life support.

The pension fund needs time to recover from a near death experience in September first. It has the added problem of currently growing at a rate of less than inflation. It has an uncanny similarity to my IT skills and the growth of new technology.

But assuming you’re not retiring anytime soon and have a stone business to run, here’s a few facts and tips for 2023.

Facts...

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) there are more than 340,000 construction companies in the UK, of which 336,000 employ fewer than 25 people.

Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) turn over £56.7billion, which is slightly more than a third of the total for construction. Lots of small portions of the sub-contractor’s cake to go round.

Construction is tough and supply chains can be long. Getting paid takes longer and the 1% of big companies that control two-thirds of the money in construction apply a tight contractual and ‘friendly’ hand around the money supply throat. Neither do they have any qualms about tightening their grip when they need too.

The majority of companies in the stone industry are SMEs. Learning to build a business beyond a SME is a skill on its own and not many of us possess it. Smaller companies often revolve around one passionate, hard-working individual.

Tips...

If you’re one of those individuals it might be worth ‘sticking to your knitting’ – in other words, stay true to the skill that drove you to set up in the first place and get some help with stuff like growing the business, selling, marketing and whatever. You can’t do everything.

But where can you get that help?

Many local authorities have business hubs dedicated to supporting SMEs. They support and nurture local enterprise with grants, reduced rates and targeted support. The government claims to cover 100% of the UK with its new Growth Hubs initiative.

Build your network. Get involved in your trade association. Stone Federation, Tiling Association, Chartered Institute of Builders, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Royal Institute of British Architects... they all hold events on a variety of topics with non-members welcome. Widen your contacts and use the resources available to network, learn more, meet customers. Find support for insurance, contract disputes, learning and development – all available from member organisations. Find out what’s available for free, such as from Future Learn, part of the Open University. It offers free business courses online that you can complete to your own timescale. There are 47 business strategy courses alone. See www.futurelearn.com.

Develop relationships. Talk to your supply chain. Visit them. Talk to your customers. Visit them, too. Keep dialogue channels open. It’s not a race to the lowest price. Add value instead – knowledge, service, reliability, dealing with problems efficiently. It’s easier to buy from those you know and trust.

Get involved. Visit exhibitions. The Natural Stone Show takes place in London in June. There’s also London Build and UK Construction Week. You might have your own favourites.

And there is now a particular emphasis on diversity, mental health and sustainability. And rightly so. Focusing on these three elements alone will strengthen your workforce and connect your business, ultimately moving it forward.

So yes, there are reasons to be jolly this festive season and to take some of that cheer into the new year.

Best wishes for 2023.

In one of the Priestman Associates delivery modules we develop the question of whether or not businesses, with their leadership and workforce, have got WoTT it takes not just to survive but to thrive?

In summary, the WoTT acronym groups the following key assets of skills development:

• Workplace Skills
• Technical Skills
• Transferable Skills

All these personal assets add to the sum of the value we offer in our work environment and our work relationships. 

Workplace skills are all about the skills we need in our organisation. They include the way we interact between management, operatives, and client representatives. It can be about grasping the bigger picture of the large and (sometimes more important) small interactions between the processes and people around us.

Omit this asset on appraisals and lament at leisure. An operative with high workplace skills might well be the hidden facilitator who gets stuff done. Sometimes known as soft skills, it can hit hard if they are absent from your project.

Technical skills tend to be most easily recognised as important. These are what are often called the hard skills – an operative’s ability to fulfil the method statement. This is what a contractor gets paid for: fixers who can fix stone; cleaners who can clean stone; restorers who can repair it... For supervisors and managers, it includes an ability to prepare for the project, programme it, monitor it, report, inform, advise, gain agreement... basically manage.

Transferable skills relate to how well competency on one job transfers to another. Sometimes an employer switches off at this point. But I’d encourage them not to because 1) this is not simply about someone you have invested in leaving and going elsewhere, and 2) you also recruit employees who have learnt skills elsewhere.

Transferable skills might include aspects such as how much exposure a supervisor has had to liaising with conservation officers or user groups. Or how much skill a manager has displayed in handling difficult customer relationships.

It might be that a workplace skill also becomes a transferable skill when a project moves from one contractor to another and some labour moves over to the new contractor. Or a case of you moving operatives around your various projects based on an appraisal of the experience they have gained and the expertise they have built up.

Interestingly, the word ‘appraisal’ derives from an original meaning of ‘setting a value’, or, in other words, putting a price on something.

Perhaps this is a good point to consider our value and to make sure we have got WoTT it takes. We should make sure our value system for conducting appraisals acknowledges not only technical know how but also workplace and transferable skills.

WHAT SAP

I am delighted to say Priestman Associates is the winner of the tender to deliver the popular CITB Specialist Applied-Skills Programmes (SAPs) in Stone Fixing and Façade Preservation at level 2, and Heritage Stonemasonry at level 3.

The SAPs programmes reduce time away from site, allow those on them to benefit from mentoring, and offer assessment for an NVQ. For CITB-registered firms the programme works out fee neutral.

As you read this, Priestman Associates is about to launch its next cohort of SAPs, so if you’d like to get in on the act please get in touch with me using the contact details below the picture above.

EXPIRING CSCS CARDS

If your CSCS card is expiring and cannot be renewed (perhaps because the route to CSCS cards is now through qualifications only [NVQs] and yours was obtained under ‘grandfather rights‘ industry accreditation, which is no longer an acceptable route), or you want to up-grade to skilled operative, advance crafts, supervisor or manager, the OSAT (on-site assessment) route is likely to be of interest to you. If you need help in this regard, please do give me a shout.

Dekton’s latest collection of SilverKoast surfaces is said to have been inspired by California’s coastline along the Pacific Ocean.

SilverKoast comes in two designs, with the look of Carrara and Ivory White marbles, and in velvet and polished finishes.

There is Malibu and Salina in a polished finish and Laguna and Marina in a velvet finish.

Cosentino, which makes Dekton, says carbon neutrality has been achieved for the entire life cycle of Dekton with a bit of help from offsetting. It covers Scopes 1, 2 & 3, from the extraction of the raw material and the calculation of the direct and indirect emissions from its production cycle, and those derived from its use to the end of the product’s life.

Dekton can be used both for outdoor and indoor applications, including floors, wall and furniture cladding, kitchen and bathroom worktops, shower trays and washbasins. It is manufactured in large-format slabs (up to 3200mm x 1440mm) in five different thicknesses (4mm, 8mm, 12mm, 20mm and 30mm).

www.cosentino.com/dekton

www.cosentino.com/en-gb