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People dodging a public toilet charge have been blamed for a £17,000 loss at a district council. Council staff across the administrative area had spotted members of the public sneaking a friend into WCs to save paying twice over for services, a cabinet revenue report at Cotswold District Council noted. The calculations made by the authority suggested around 85,000 people used the public loos without paying between April 2011 to March 2012. Revenue raising secure and sturdy coin entry toilet turnstiles are available from Tensor. They can be installed in many different configurations according to what the customer desires. Tensor’s turnstiles offer improved security and extend flow capacity. They can be put in prestige access points and need no routine maintenance. Another option is that coupled with a set of smart cards, flow capacity is significantly increased compared with any swipe card system, as the card is read in under ¼ second and does not have to be removed from a wallet or purse.

A bus strike due to start tomorrow (Thursday) in a dispute over Olympic bonuses has been postponed while union officials look at a new offer. Management have offered a bonus of £583 to drivers working on 24 of the 29 days that this summer’s Games take place, or £700 for drivers in busy garages. The conciliation service Acas confirmed the strike has been put on hold after a third day of talks. Acas chief conciliator Peter Harwood said: “Acas talks are continuing.” Bonuses and other staff payments are done with a sprint rather than a marathon thanks to easy-to-use Tensor Time and Attendance payroll technology. Tensor WinTA systems handle all major hours calculation methods, absence planning and entitlement management. WinTA allows you to create a series of shift premium rules that enable employees to earn bonus payments under special circumstances. The bonus is calculated either as extra hours or monetary amounts and can be included in the export to payroll.  

  More Olympic security fears have been raised this week when it emerged 3,500 extra servicemen would be needed to help police the summer event, which begins in a couple of weeks. The Government said it was revealed only on Wednesday that contractor G4S did not have enough trained security staff. Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond said he had authorised the deployment of the 3,500 extra people, bringing the total number of military personnel contributing to Games security to 17,000. From the control of a single internal door through to a fully PC-powered, multi-site network of building security control points, a Tensor Access System is the solution. You can control most standard types of internal and external electronic and magnetic door releases and devices. When a person attempts to pass through an access point, the T32xx access control unit compares an individual’s security profile with that of the access point. Security profiles are based upon the day, time of day, and the security threat level of the attempted access.  http://www.tensor.co.uk/access-control

A second man has been arrested after a theft at a museum was foiled. The thieves originally broke into Norwich Castle back in February, and one man was caught soon after the event. Now police have revealed a 21-year-old from Newham, east London, has been detained and released on bail until September. The men were thought to have left the scene in a dark hatchback car parked outside the castle being driven by a fifth person. Tensor has many devices and systems designed to secure all manner of premises, whether museums, offices or large sites. The key role of a Tensor barrier is to prevent unauthorised access whilst providing minimum inconvenience to those who do have authorisation. Suitable for both large and small premises, car park barriers are highly adaptable, can work in any weather, and are able to immediately recognise authorised personnel. For more information on car park barriers, turnstiles, and bollards, we would be happy to send you a datasheet.  

Partly to lead by example when the body is cost-cutting, BBC director general (DG) Mark Thompson’s salary has been reduced. He earned £622,000 in the past financial year, which is down from £779,000. Mr Thompson earned 15 times more than the median pay of a BBC employee. He is stepping down in September, when the new DG will be George Entwistle. His salary will be significantly lower: £450,000 in his first year. Total BBC executive pay has also been halved. The Tensor Personnel.NET system is the result of a decade of real world experience in the human resources and time and attendance sectors. Our personnel software offers everything your company would expect from a personnel management system and many more features that will save time and aid strategic planning. Fully customisable reports can also be generated by the Tensor personnel software allowing it to seamlessly blend in with your own corporate identity. The Pay Reviewer function includes reports on projected pay increases.  

An estimated quarter of a million pounds’ worth of damage has been caused by a beach fire. Crews were called to a car park in East Lothian, in the early hours of Saturday morning (July 14). When they arrived a wooden one-storey toilet block was already alight. Fire crews remained in attendance at the rural Scottish site for nine hours before declaring the area safe. The block, which had almost been completed, is part of a £500,000 refurbishment of beach facilities. Access control, clocking and security products from Tensor are unbeatable at health and safety provision. This is because they can be integrated with fire roll call software that will automatically produce a report if a fire or other emergency occurs at the workplace. Your members of staff simply log themselves on and off site within a quarter-second using their ultra-fast proximity read smart cards or key fobs. An evacuation list is then printed at a safe pre-determined remote point.  

There could be an end to paid union time at work. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has initiated a consultation into how much paid time staff should be allowed to carry out union business at their desks. Mr Maude said: “In the civil service alone tens of millions of pounds are spent on trade union facility time and across the public sector that figure is much higher.” He concluded: “It isn’t right that taxpayers are funding full-time union representatives.” WinTA Start is an embryo clocking and HR system from Tensor for Time and Attendance, comprising a T32xx Smart Card clocking station and 25 Smart Cards. It can manage time and attendance recording for up to 50 people. User-definable working rules, rosters and shifts include a summary of clocking details which can be viewed at-a-glance. Human resources staff or supervisors can define multiple paid or unpaid breaks and ask WinTA Start to insert breaks if an employee forgets to clock them.  

Cameras will be mounted on police dogs to aid the pursuit of criminals. Twenty officers of the dog support unit (DSU) and their animals will be using the £10,000 equipment over the next 12 months. Police believe the gear will aid them in situations like drug busts. DSU member Inspector Chris Dawson said: “This bit of kit is fantastic. It attaches to the dog's head and we can get a live view of what they are seeing.” From automatic number plate recognition, visitor and prison monitoring systems, to CCTV networks – Tensor will have the right surveillance technology for your firm’s needs. The SiteSight system is an example of a mobile remote video which has 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. The solid state trailer system provides a platform which both transports the system from site to site and when in deployed-mode forms a self-contained working platform functioning as a fully integrated remote video system. Its features include a high output alarm siren and fully contained DVR.  

It was alleged at the Leveson Inquiry that two officers at high-security prisons took illegal payments from national newspaper journalists. Giving evidence, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said Scotland Yard had analysed stories possibly linked to payments to two senior prison officers at separate prisons. Neil Garnham, QC for the Metropolitan Police Service, admitted: “We frankly admit that there have been incidents which led to a plain perception of cosiness between particular senior MPS officers and particular journalists.” Security experts Tensor plc offers Prison Pass: a low cost pass regime which is a version of our computer-based systems for registering each visitor to a premises, both on and off site. It allows HM Prison Service Officers to quickly check the identity and monitor the movements of visitors. Comprehensive reporting software is available to generate records of the following – the historical movements of inmate visitors; contractor times on site; visitor to inmate analysis; and standard warning or banned notification letters.  

A committee chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron this (Tuesday) morning decided to issue more than one thousand additional armed personnel amid continued concern about Olympic security staffing levels. London Organising Committee (Locog) chief executive Paul Deighton said: “The reason that this decision has been taken is just to absolutely de-risk any aspect of the operation… with three days to go.” The extra troops, who had been on 48 hours’ notice, were called up before the weekend. Tensor can provide all manner and sizes of companies with automated clocking and access control systems that inform management when staffing or rostering levels are short. The proactive system keeps you abreast of events by automatically emailing or SMS text messaging both employees and system users. Examples of this function include supervisor notification when flagged employees clock in. Using speakers attached to a PC or to Tensor’s audio distribution network, spoken alerts are heard in a variety of voices and on screen ‘agents’ (similar to the Microsoft paperclip).  

Fewer pupils are being permanently excluded from school in England, say the latest official figures. The numbers fell by more than 11% last year. Department for Education figures show 5,080 pupils were expelled in 2010-11. Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England, applauded the statistics but was concerned that certain groups were over-represented. For example, pupils on free school meals were nearly four times more likely to be permanently excluded and three times more likely to get a fixed-term exclusion. A method of improving behaviour in the classroom is to install PC Clock from Tensor. This is a simple PC based booking system ideal for places where each pupil has access to a computer. WinTA PC Clock is a cost-effective method of recording attendance as there is no need for a new time and attendance network (for example if your school has already adopted one for staff). PC Clock’s analysis module consists of a scaled-down version of Tensor's acclaimed WinTA Lite time and attendance software.  

A strike involving border control workers planned for the eve of the Olympics – which officially begin tomorrow (Friday) – has been called off. The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union confirmed the strikes and work-to-rule action by immigration and passport staff have been called off. After some compromises PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said: “The key areas like borders will see a significant increase of staff. We are proud of our workers who keep our borders secure. These are professional, hard-working staff.” Working rules are comfortably dealt with a Tensor clocking and time and attendance system. Absence management is one of its features. Using the time and attendance software you can choose to view all types of absences, a single absence type or all types with a common category. Absence categories and types are fully user-definable. Up to nine reason codes can also be stored in the clocking station. These allow clocking out for configurable reasons such as Dentist, Business or Smoking Break.