The new owners will use their complementary strengths, expertise and networks to fully realise the park’s potential as a centre of excellence for research and development across the region, potentially creating huge numbers of high value jobs. 

 

The science park is in a prime location and provides an ideal base for national businesses, the University of Bath said.

 

Plans for the 36-acre site will complement existing businesses based at the Park as well as exploiting regional science and engineering strengths. These include:

• maximising the potential of the National Composites Centre (NCC)

• creating GO2, a new Grow-on Centre, to build on the success of the existing complex

• utilising the Forum exhibition and conference facility to support additional SMEs.

 

Professor Egan said: “Purchasing the science park is an important step in the realisation of our university strategy. It will enable us to increase our research activity to address global problems.

 

"It will contribute to business and technology development across our region as well as providing additional capacity and facilities to complement those on our Claverton campus, in London and in Bath city centre.”

 

Leader of South Gloucestershire Council, Toby Savage, said: “The Science Park in Emersons Green is a world-class centre for science and technology businesses to grow and prosper and is already home to a wide variety of innovative and inspirational start-ups.

 

“The council, along with our partners at the University of Bath recognise the park’s potential as a future driver of economic growth which would bring even more new high tech jobs to the area. 

 

The sale was facilitated by Homes England and advised by Bristol-based property consultancy JLL.

 

Paul Baker, director at JLL in Bristol, said: “We believe that this joint purchase will breathe new life into the park and the IAAPS project will act as the stimulus for other development on the site.

 

"This new centre of excellence in automotive engineering will also attract businesses in this sector to the region, potentially enabling the emergence of a new specialist tech cluster in the Bristol and Bath area.”

 

 

______________

 

 

If this joint project works as intended, the business park will not only improve its reputation to become a leader in its region, but it will also start to attract highly-qualified applicants from other areas too. 

 

This is particularly the case with SMEs, which the council and university have said they are interested in helping using their conference centres and Exhibition hall.

 

An influx of new staff is the perfect opportunity to check whether or not your time and attendance system is as efficient as it should be. 

 

Many companies are still using paper timesheets to record their employees’ hours and calculate their weekly or monthly payslips. There are many disadvantages to this type of attendance management which you should be aware of if you are still using these in 2018. 

 

For example, if your timesheets are submitted monthly it is unlikely that employees will be able to remember their exact hours for the whole month. 

This would then lead to incorrect payslips, which could cause problems with the employees, or even with outside authorities if you don’t realise that unreported overtime has put your employee over the Working Time Regulations. 

 

Our time and attendance system records everyone’s entrance and exit from controlled doors, using either smartcards or the more expensive but more secure biometric measurements of hands or fingerprints. So there’s no more chance for employees to forget timings, or to deliberately lie.

 

All the entrance/exit data from our system is exportable into a format suitable for all major payroll programmes. This means that payroll staff don’t have to struggle with employees’ bad handwriting, which further reduces the likelihood of human error. 

 

The software automatically calculates whether employees’ shifts and hours would make them breach the Working Time Regulations. One less thing to worry about. 

 

We also have the Self Service Module, which can be accessed from a browser or from your mobile via the app (available on Android and iOS). This enables employees to sign in and out, and request holiday amongst other features.