The phrase ‘Charity Tuesday’ isn’t solely confined to Twitter today after work by the Unsworth Sugden PR team saw coverage in this morning’s Leicester Mercury for client Westleigh Developments. This comes after its commercial division welcomed the regional office of a leading national charity to its LE3 office park in Leicester Forest East.

Tuesdays on the social networking and micro blogging website appear to have been designated as the chosen day of the week for charities and good causes to raise awareness and tell the world both what they do and when they do it, using the hashtag #charitytuesday.

So it seems quite apt that we have received coverage on a Tuesday for our press release about Alzheimer’s Society relocating its office for Leicester City, Leicestershire and Rutland from Humberstone Gate in the city centre to new premises at the development, close to junction 21a of the M1, which provides it with more space and the opportunity for future growth.

We spoke to representatives from the charity, Westleigh and property agents Innes England to gauge their opinions on the move and the local commercial property market before also organising photography and liaising with the paper. The end result was this great piece in today’s Business supplement.

(from left to right) Matt Moore of Westleigh, Sally Grundy of Alzheimer’s Society and Chris Page from Innes England at LE3

Both client Schlüter-Systems and the PR team are celebrating after the Schlüter Online Academy won the Best Innovation category at The Tile Association (TTA) Awards 2011 on Saturday!

The web-based training facility is the first of its kind in the tiling industry and despite being just a few months old was named as winner at a lavish awards ceremony in Birmingham at the weekend (2nd April).

As previously revealed on our blog, this comes after the PR team liaised closely with the client to create a detailed, informative and smart award entry.

The Schlüter Online Academy is a complete online learning system, providing 24 hour access to a wealth of product and continuing professional development (CPD) courses, aimed at building the knowledge and confidence of people throughout the industry. It works alongside Schlüter’s existing detailed training programmes which keep installers, distributors, architects, retailers, stockists, tiling lecturers at college and trainers at independent training centres up to date with the latest trends and technology.

To sign up for the Schlüter Online Academy, please visit www.elearningatschluter.co.uk and click on Register.

Both the client and PR team are celebrating!

March’s PR snap shot of the month shows members of Biggleswade Scouts, all smiles, as client David Wilson South Midlands, makes a donation of £500.

The 219 members, aged between eight and 18, will see the money spent on the two Beaver colonies for their ‘The Beds Giant Country Sleepover’, as well as some of it being allocted as the first prize for the grand draw, to help raise more funds for the scout group.

The remainder of the money will be used throughout the year to support other events and activities.

Jackie Day, Sales Director at David Wilson, which has a development of new homes in Biggleswade called The Maythorns, comments, “When we were approached by Biggleswade Scout Group to make a donation, we didn’t hesitate in saying yes. The scout group is an important part of the local community and we are delighted to be able to support in such a positive way.”

This morning’s Leicester Mercury features more post-Budget coverage for another of our local PR clients.

After Westleigh Developments appeared in last Thursday’s paper, today is the turn of fellow property developer Raynsway Properties as managing director Tom Watkinson gives a cautious welcome to plans to overhaul the planning system and further reaction to the removal of red tape for businesses and Leicestershire not being named as one of the 10 selected enterprise zones across the UK.

For those of you with a copy of today’s paper you can read the article on page 10 of the business supplement, otherwise you can read a PDF of the article here.

Tom Watkinson, MD of Raynsway Properties, gives his reaction to the Budget in today's Leicester Mercury

One of the Chancellor’s announcements yesterday during the 2011 Budget was a new £250 million shared equity scheme, called First Buy, aimed at helping around 10,000 first time buyers to get onto the property ladder and purchase a new build home.

When the Leicester Mercury came looking for an immediate response to this particular part of George Osborne’s speech, we were able to supply a comment from client Westleigh Developments.

As part of his quote on Home Buy, Ian Jones,  Business Development Director at the regional property developer, urged caution saying “the devil will be in the detail and it will be interesting to see how these changes are implemented in the coming weeks.”

You can read the full article on page 9 of today’s Mercury or HERE if you haven’t a copy. This forms part of the paper’s comprehensive post-Budget coverage.

Will George help the commercial property market in tomorrow's Budget or won't he?

EDIT: Afternoon of Wednesday 23rd March - Reaction to the Budget:

In response to the question posed in the title of this blog - not an awful lot! At least not at first glance. There are a number of reforms earmarked for the planning regime which sound interesting, which on paper could make life for developers a little easier. But as with all these things, whilst they sound very nice, how long will it take these new rules to kick in? Hopefully not “a number of years”, which the Chancellor seemed to say about a number of his proposals today.

Keep watching for the blog for more ‘post-Budget’ comments from our clients.

There were lots of happy dogs at the East Midlands Dog Rescue last week, after client David Wilson East Midlands donated £200 worth of dog food to the centre.

The charity has recently opened up a new shop in Barwell, near David Wilson’s Haswell Meadows development on The Common, so they sent Wellington, their own friendly golden retriever along to deliver the food to the waiting dogs.

Both the greyhounds and the smaller breeds were well looked after, with a mix of specialist dry food and tins of ‘Cesar’, which were all gratefully received.

Wellington and his new friends at the Rescue Centre

The PR team recently went all ‘Time Team’ and dug in to achieve some great coverage when it was revealed that client Westleigh Developments had unearthed the first example of a Roman cemetery plot for the historic Lincolnshire town of Sleaford during construction work on a new affordable housing development .

The regional property developer discovered the Roman remains, thought to be up to 1,800 years old, at the site on Boston Road in 2009 and analysis by APS Archaeology since has not just confirmed their age and origin but also provided a unique insight into the health and lifestyle of those who inhabited the town.

After working with the client to sieve through a wealth of technical information and researching further details with APS, the PR team recently issued a press release, with the Lincolnshire Echo running THIS SUPERB PIECE in today’s paper.

One of the Roman burials recovered at Boston Road in Sleaford

The PR team visited EcoBuild yesterday, the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest constructon event of any kind.

Held at the ExCeL London exhibition centre in the heart of the Docklands, there were over 1,300 exhibitors and a whole host of free seminars, demonstrations and lectures available. As well as catching up with some of the construction trade media titles, we also visited the stand of client Schlüter-Systems, the leading UK supplier of tile solutions, which was extremely busy.

As you can see from the pic below, there were plenty of visitors interested in learning more about their range of market-leading products including universal structural panel Schlüter^®-KERDI-BOARD and Schluter^®-BEKOTEC-THERM, its advanced underfloor heating system.

There were many interested visitors to the Schlüter-Systems stand at EcoBuild 2011

Both client Schlüter-Systems and the PR team are celebrating after the Schlüter Online Academy was nominated for a prestigious industry award just months after its launch.

This web-based training facility, the first of its kind in the tiling industry, has been shortlisted in the Best Innovation category of The Tile Association (TTA) Awards 2011. This follows work by the PR team, who liaised closely with the client to create a detailed, informative and smart award entry.

Representatives from Schlüter will now travel to the Birmingham Hilton Metropole on Saturday 2nd April for the awards ceremony.

The Schlüter Online Academy is a complete online learning system, providing 24 hour access to a wealth of product and continuing professional development (CPD) courses, aimed at building the knowledge and confidence of people throughout the industry. It works alongside Schlüter’s existing detailed training programmes which keep installers, distributors, architects, retailers, stockists, tiling lecturers at college and trainers at independent training centres up to date with the latest trends and technology.

To sign up for the Schlüter Online Academy, please visit www.elearningatschluter.co.uk and click on Register.

The Schlüter Online Academy helps train people up and down the country from the comfort of their PC