The Business Village People cover art

The Business Village People

The Business Village People

Written by: podone.co.uk
Listen for free

Welcome to The Business Village People. It's an entertaining podcast about the businesses and people who work at The Business Village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. We take you behind the scenes and discover what success means to companies and staff. We share interesting stories about life, dreams, and ambitions, from the richly diverse range of businesses on site. Plus, over the series, we showcase the great things that can happen when businesses work together. For more information: Call us on 01226 249590 email hello@BarnsleyBIC.co.uk Follow us on Twitter @BarnsleyBIC Find us on Facebook @BarnsleyBIC Follow us on Instagram Join The Business Village on Linkedin2023 Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • The Business Village People Podcast S2 E9 "THE BENEFITS OF FOSTERING".

    The Business Village People Podcast S2 E9 "THE BENEFITS OF FOSTERING".
    Aug 28 2025
    This is a POD ONE production. For more information, visit podone.co.uk. This is the Business Village People podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell and welcome to the Barnsley Business Village People Podcast. This is episode nine of series two. In this podcast, we showcase stories from the companies, service providers and staff at the Business Village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. In this episode of Business Village People. The Business Village has a strong working relationship with enterprising Barnsley. They provide business support to companies looking to expand, develop, and flourish, as well as guidance and help for new businesses. Paul Johnson is a key account manager. We'll be finding out from him. How enterprising Barnsley can help companies win. But first, I'd like to introduce you to Capstone Foster Care, an independent fostering agency that supports hundreds of carers across England. One of their officers is based here at the Business Village. I've been along to have a chat with them. My name's Allison Dixon, and um, I'm a senior practitioner, uh, social worker, and I work for Capstone North. It's a fostering agency. We're an, um, independent foster agency who are employee, employee owned. So a lot of our, um, business and our money goes back into, um, supporting foster carers and families. Lots of events for children and families. So we'll have like a celebration day. We'll celebrate Eid. For example, we have Christmas events. We take the children to like Gulliver's or rather valley, the water park we've done in previous years. So it's basically we're, we're a small ho in Barnsley. It's a bigger organisation, Capstone North. But, um, we've got that kind of family feel. So how did Capstone begin? Began in 2009 as an independent foster agency, and then obviously it's evolved over the years and it's quite a big organization. Well, it's become bigger, but like I say, we've got individual hubs. And we are based here in Barnsley Business Centre, but we've also got Hobson, Bradford and Hull in Manchester and also in the south of England. How, how do you fit into the picture? So basically we work with a wide variety of local authorities from all over the borough and, um, it can be as far as far away as, as say, Bristol down south. And sometimes children move around for whatever reason. Um, so, so we work with all the local authorities and we receive referrals for children that need to be looked after and cared for. 'cause they're in, they're very vulnerable and they've been assessed by the courts to come into care. And I don't know if you're aware, but there's a national shortage of foster carers. So, and, and I think as well since COVID and the Pandemic, a lot of the spare rooms that people had. That they need for fostering. 'cause they need to have their own bedroom. Um, they've been used for offices, so then that's created, um, a bit of a problem. And so nationally it's very difficult, um, for children to be placed in area. So the area, so we, we try to kinda. Manage that and recruit foster carers, which every, every fostering agency and local authority is trying to do. What do you look for in a foster carer? Someone that's empathic, that's obviously got got, they need a spare room and a bedroom for a start. They have lots of training. Um, we like them to be holistic and [00:04:00] therapeutic in the approach. And their approach to parenting. We look for skills. It, it could be that they've maybe been, um, teachers or support workers or possibly worked in the care sector themselves. Um, a lot of our foster carers are like kinda middle aged, or they could be in their fifties. We also have some younger ones. And, and there's, it's a wide variety. Sometime we have short break foster carers, so they might just provide care for children on a weekend basis or for a week or just like on a short term basis. And then other short term carers could be, could be up to two years. And if the child settles, then it goes to long term. So the skills we need is, is basically to accept these children as part of your family. That's what we're looking for. They get fully assessed. It's called a Form F assessment, and it basically goes through that person's whole life and any previous relationships or so we, so we look for any kinda strengths, vulnerabilities, uh, that doesn't kinda count them out. It just depends. Um, obviously if they've got a criminal record for violence or something, then we wouldn't consider it. It just depends on the person. So it is like a really thorough assessment because we want to get the right people there. There are so many different kinds of fostering that you are looking for. Yeah, and we also do parent and child as well. And that could be both parents and a child or children or one parent and that's, that's a different, but they need additional training to become a parent and child foster care. So, so it's quite, it's quite wide and varied really. The foster enroll and, and every year the ...
    Show More Show Less
    26 mins
  • The Business Village People Podcast S2 Ep 8 "Remembering Adrian"

    The Business Village People Podcast S2 Ep 8 "Remembering Adrian"
    May 29 2025
    This is a Pod One production. For more information, visit pod1.co.uk. This is the Business Village People podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell , and welcome to the Business Village People podcast. This is episode eight of series two. In this podcast, we showcase stories from the companies, service providers and staff at the Business Village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. In this episode of Business Village People, we meet Dave Moss from Property Projects Yorkshire Limited. His company identifies houses that need renovation. He secures investment to fund the purchase and the refurbishment and ultimately utilises their buildings as social housing. I also have a conversation with Gemma Edwards from Get Real Comms. Gemma's business career has taken her to many countries , and while living in Spain, she secured a job with William Hill Online Betting. Today she runs her own communication company here at the Business Village. In February of this year, everyone at the Business Village, both staff and tenants, was saddened to hear of the sudden death of Adrian Waite, the former chief executive of the Business Village. Adrian retired just over a year ago. Not long after we began this podcast, we knew we wanted to invite Adrian to share more about himself. He came on, we recorded it, and this is Adrian Waite in his own words. My name is Adrian Waite. I'm the Chief Executive here at the Business Village. I was born in Lisbon in Northern Ireland and spent a little bit of time in England before my mum and dad took me off to Australia when I was fairly small. And so my formative years were spent Sydney. I can remember walking off the plane when it arrived in Sydney airport the first time. I think I was five years of age. I've been led to believe that Australia was very, very hot, but we arrived in the middle of winter , and it was absolutely freezing. The next thing, I looked around and I couldn't see a kangaroo anywhere. In my junior years in Australia, I think it was very much juniors who were still sort of seen and not heard. So I can remember my first time on a tennis court was when the temperature was 40 degrees Celsius and there were no adults interested in playing at that temperature. My early introductions into sport were playing tennis when it was too hot for the adults and playing golf at 5 o' clock in the morning because the tee times were booked from seven for adults only. I wanted to be a pilot, but as my eye deteriorated. You had to be very good at physics. The eyesight and the physics killed my dream of being a pilot. I ended up becoming a geologist. I have a degree in geology from the University of Birmingham. I got offered a PhD at the University of Edinburgh to go and study the algal growth on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. But unfortunately, I lost my grant and , to cut a long story short, ended up doing a master's degree at Leeds University in engineering geology. So my first career was as a geotechnical engineer. So that's sort of halfway between geology and civil engineering. I am what's called the Lawn Tennis Association councillor for Yorkshire. So I sit on the advisory body, about 60 LTA councillors in total. We work alongside colleagues at the LTA and advise them on strategy. I was self-employed in the noughties. When the world fell off a cliff in 2008. I went from being very gainfully employed as a consultant to working about 20 hours a week. I thought I'd better try and find something else to do to fill those hours. I heard about a role in Barnsley, working on a specific project, working with the larger companies and helping them with taking advantage of public sector support. And I thought it would just be for a couple of years. I kept getting into different projects and Tim Milburn, who was the chief here, he retired after 22 years. I sort of knocked on his door and said, do you think I might be the type of guy the board is looking for? And he encouraged me to apply for his job and here I am. We're much more modern, I think, than nine years ago. We've invested a lot in future-proofing. So I'd like to think that, you know, some tenant who came and based themselves here would say it's a modern, forward thinking organisation I've come to be based at, but the infrastructure that's in place is going to be the right infrastructure for my business moving forward. So I look at things like broadband. I think we have the fastest speeds in Barnsley. I think the infrastructure we're putting in place. So, as things like artificial intelligence take off, my understanding is it'll require a larger bandwidth. We've already put those sorts of structures in place so people won't have to say, well, you know, we'll have to leave the business village because it doesn't have the facilities, the technology that we require. So I'd like to think that we're, you know, ...
    Show More Show Less
    35 mins
  • The Business Village People Podcast S2 E7 "I really wanted to be Carl Fogarty, but my mum said no!."

    The Business Village People Podcast S2 E7 "I really wanted to be Carl Fogarty, but my mum said no!."
    Nov 14 2024
    This is a Pod One production. For more information, visit Pod One. Co. Uk. This is the Business Village People Podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell. And welcome, welcome, welcome to the Business Village People Podcast. This is episode seven. In this Podcast, we showcase stories from the company's service providers and staff at the business village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Well, if you're ready, let's go. In this episode, we meet Karen Greenwood from Newable, a non-bank lender. Newable was founded in 1982 as the Greater London Enterprise by a number of London Borough Councils to help companies with funding. And today, they also have more than a finger or two in the business village pie as well. In the past, Karen has worked for banks and independent lenders and has provided funding ranging from 8, 000 to purchase a second-hand car to a multi-million pound deal. Which you'll hear about shortly. Here's Karen's story. I work at Newable Commerce and currently head up the credit and risk team. Newable Commerce was created 40-odd years ago by the London Borough Councils um, designed to service the SME market because they were underserved in many areas. So Newell has effectively three divisions, uh, workspace, advice, and lending, and it was designed to take in a One man band who needed an office for the day or a desk or a meeting room, give them advice on how to break into new markets, uh, how to achieve new customers, and then how to fund his work and capital. And we do exactly the same thing today from the little One man band through to businesses that turn over 10 to 20 million pounds. Could you help out a little Podcasting business in Barnsley? Quite possibly, we could help out a little Podcasting business in Barnsley. This One, we do have One caveat. So Nouveau Commerce is One of the divisions in Lending. We've been set up to help export in SMEs. Um, it's a part of the market we feel is very much underserved. In our advice division, we've had the International Trade Advisors in there. So we've got some experienced people behind the scenes that can help and direct, as well as things like DBT and UK Export Finance. Um, they're saying from our side, we look at finding different ways to find the right solution depending on what size of the exporting business is and what they're trying to achieve. So we've got some existing exporters and we've got some who are new to exporting. When I was reading the web page and the stuff that you sent through to me, it's straight out with the top of my head. How did you start in this business and why? Oh, goodness me. So I came through a traditional banking route many, many years ago, um, because I wanted to work in the small to mid market section. Didn't want to go into corporate banking where the big boys are because quite frankly, they're, they're really easy decisions to make. The difference is that we help the SMEs. Um, as I knew, but we're set up to help the SMEs, which really attracted me, um, into the job. Um, we've gOne from the last three years to no lending to offering under the recovery loan scheme and launching the growth guarantee screen, which is now replaced the recovery loan scheme. And we obtained our accreditation on UK export finance scheme. I'm very proud of that actually, because it took us two and a half years and we're the only non bank lender on the scheme. And the whole point is we are the Ones that's there to try and support the SMEs. Um, One of my favorites. Well, it's not my favorite, but it's One of my favorite to remind people of how desperate the need is for the SMEs is that SMEs in this country export compared to 44 percent in Germany. You know, we're supposed to be a nation of small businesses and the small businesses today become the medium sized businesses tomorrow and the big businesses thereafter. And I genuinely feel that they're not helped sufficiently by people with the expertise and knowledge, the ability to signpost and network people, or just understand what challenges they face. So this is why I came into it. And I absolutely love it. We've got 200 clients on our books in two years time. Um, we are the biggest lender by number of clients on the UK expertise. What finance scheme, which I say I'm very proud of because we can see we make a difference. We don't just provide funding which is used in day to day working capital. We've provided funding that's being used for recruitment for expansion for developing new products, a lot of green technology. So we really make a difference. I love it. What's the marketplace like for non bank lenders? Is it a particularly big market or? It's huge. So currently, as I said, we have 200 clients in our box in two years time, and we have huge growth ambitions. We've carried out research that we believe there's currently about 300, 000 SMEs in the UK that could actually be supported through our range of cash flow solutions. Can I just stop you there? If you even What did...
    Show More Show Less
    19 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet