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FULLY-ONLINE VEHICLE TRACKING
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TELEMATICS SPECIALIST Trakm8 is launching the UK’ s first fully-online vehicle tracking solution.
Designed for trades professionals and other small businesses, Trakm8 Prime is the only vehicle tracking available where the customer can browse and buy online, without having to deal with a sales person. The tracker unit can be self-installed, so there are no installation or removal fees- and vehicle down time is kept to a minimum.
It combines GPS tracking with innovative features designed to help save time and money. These include a driver coaching system proven to cut fuel consumption by up to 15 percent. It achieves these savings by helping employees to break bad habits such as heavy acceleration, harsh braking, sharp cornering, and engine idling.
Furthermore, Trakm8 Prime features the company’ s marketleading vehicle health alerts. The tracker picks up on any vehicle
‘ The tracker unit can be self-installed’
fault codes, acting as an early warning system to prevent costly breakdowns and non-starts. It also enables quick and easy separation of business and private mileage, eliminating hours of paperwork while helping both sole traders and smaller companies to remain HMRC-compliant.
https:// buy. trakm8. com / prime
Change of heart towards council housing
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MOST OF THE HEADLINES ABOUT the autumn budget focussed on the Chancellor’ s stamp duty cuts. The threshold has been raised to £ 300,000, supposedly to help first-time buyers and families who are desperate to move to bigger properties. Chris Coxon, Head of Marketing at Eurocell, considers the announcements.
The jury is out on whether the stamp duty break will have its intended effect. But the detail that caught our eye was plans to lift borrowing caps on Housing Revenue Accounts for local authorities in areas of‘ high affordability pressures’ so that they can build more council homes.
This follows on from Theresa May’ s announcement of an additional £ 2bn funding to deliver 25,000 homes for social rent, during her embattled speech to the Conservative Party Conference in October. And while neither gesture can be considered a game-changer, what they do demonstrate is a change of heart from the Government towards local authority house building. This is good news all round. On a social level, affordable rented properties are the only answer for many struggling households.
www. eurocell. co. uk
CALL FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN HOMES
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THE GLASS AND GLAZING Federation( GGF) was cautiously optimistic in response to housebuilding announcements made at the 2017 budget. Despite the government’ s focus on housebuilding, the GGF believes more action is needed to ensure the UK meets the target of building 300,000 homes per year. The GGF was also disappointed the Budget contained no measures to increase the energy efficiency of the UK’ s homes, some of the worst performing in Europe.
HOUSEBUILDING PROGRAMMES
Governments of all colours have proposed speeding up the planning process and unlocking public sector land, but the UK’ s housebuilding rate has remained well below target over the last decade. Therefore, the GGF does not expect to see a sudden surge in housebuilding, particularly at a time when confidence in the construction sector in the year ahead dropped to its lowest level since December 2012.
THE LACK OF A‘ WHOLE HOUSE APPROACH’
All housebuilding programmes should be centred on a‘ Whole House Approach’ to ensure new and existing homes are energy efficient and can keep people warm during winter. The GGF was disappointed the government failed to include measures to ensure housing stock is energy efficient.
www. MyGlazing. com
8 » JAN 2018 » CLEARVIEW-UK. COM