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Conservative MP Mark Pritchard said extending Sunday trading hours would not “necessarily bring about significant growth”. He added in his objections: “A lot of people don’t want to have to work on Sundays… they want some downtime.” The prime minister’s official spokesman stated that there had been a specific act of parliament to extend trading hours during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. However, when asked about a permanent change in the law, he said the issue needed to be looked at. Has your firm had to consider significantly changing its operation and working hours? A Tensor Time & Attendance system gives you complete control over hours, rosters, pay bands and holidays. You can define multiple paid or unpaid breaks and ask the WinTA Time & Attendance system to insert breaks if an employee doesn’t clock them. Periodic Overtime is used to calculate overtime on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. Standard reports include: Weekly clock card, Lateness Report, Payroll Summary, Absence Summary and Exceptions.  

On Tuesday (September 4) police arrested two men in connection with a ram-raid on a bank. Officers carried out a warrant at a premises near to where the crime occurred, at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. The men, aged 50 and 27, were arrested on suspicion of burglary. A month ago five men wearing Balaclava head gear used a JCB to break into the branch of HSBC in the early-hours raid. Police soon recovered the JCB and another vehicle. Recent advances in technology have revolutionised the methods available to monitor movement and access within a specific area. A Tensor Digital CCTV system works extremely well at protecting all sorts of premises and is a cornerstone of an effective site security network. If you already have an analogue CCTV system installed at your site, you may only require a simple upgrade of some of the elements on your network in order to adopt digital. Picture quality of digital CCTV systems is far superior to that of analogue ones.  

At its annual Congress the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has voted to support co-ordinated strike action over a public sector pay freeze. Newly-appointed TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said government spending cuts were “sucking money out of people's pockets”. Downing Street said it would continue the freeze and rejected calls to re-open talks on pay or pensions. A Downing Street spokesperson said: “We have put in place some changes to pensions – we don’t intend to reopen those talks.” Both planned and unplanned absences from work are tracked via mobile and wireless technology based Time & Attendance from Tensor. Absenteeism and lateness reporting are just some of the functions of our advanced WinTA system. Email / SMS / speech notifications and alerts of missing employees are an advantage of the Tensor network. 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).  

Last Tuesday outgoing HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Denis O’Connor gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on the subject of Olympics security. The Home Office last year commissioned Sir Denis to produce a report on this matter. Committee chairman Keith Vaz MP said: “The Committee intends to conclude its inquiry into Olympic Security by the end of September.” It has been arranged so that any criminal cases directly connected with London 2012 were especially fast-tracked in the courts. Tensor Access Lite is a simple door and registration point control Access Control network which is a starting point for corporate security. Using Tensor Access Lite and Tensor's T149x scanners, you can control most standard types of internal and external electronic, magnetic door releases and devices. Tensor Access Lite can operate a maximum of four T32xx clocking stations and record employee details for up to 250 people. This edition can also link to your WinTA Lite time and attendance application, where it efficiently shares employee data.

More than one-third of UK workers have ‘pulled a sickie’, says Confused.com. When the consumer website interviewed the staff, they admitted having lied to their boss about the reason they took time off. The latest Confederation of British Industry (CBI) workplace health survey shows that the UK economy lost 190 million working days to absence last year, with each employee taking an average of 6.5 days off sick. CBI figures say there were 30.4 million days of non-genuine sickness absence. Contingency plans for sickness and recording staff absence are all issues handled by a Tensor clocking station and accompanying WinTA Time and Attendance system. The year-to-view absence planner shows absences for individuals or departments, making it easy to plan office training and holiday dates. Up to nine reason codes for workplace absence can also be stored in a Tensor clocking workstation. These allow your staff to legitimately clock out for configurable reasons such as Dentist, Business or Smoking Break.

An assistant chief constable said his team has performed well in crime reduction this summer despite possible problems caused by outside factors. Gareth Pritchard remarked about his force covering North Wales lowering crime by 6%: “There was some concern earlier in the summer that deployments of staff to the Olympic Games in London would damage our capability to reduce crime during this busy period.” He urged people to take simple security precautions to keep their homes and business premises safe. An effective way to keep your business premises safe is to set up a Tensor visitor monitoring scheme at Reception where personal details are recorded and digitally stored. Companies that do not have a front desk receptionist can take advantage of the Unmanned Reception Console. This is operated via touch screen technology only; no mouse or keyboard is needed. Here, visitors with appointments can book themselves in and out and the back office can contact their host upon their arrival.  

Complaints from residents have caused town councillors to reconsider bringing public toilets back into use. The toilet block in Bridport was closed in April after a repair bill rose to more than £12,000 during the last financial year. The Dorset-based town council announced in February this year that it was intending to sell the WC outbuilding but so far the authority has not confirmed a price. It had decided to build a new toilet block nearby. A set of toilet turnstiles from Tensor offer improved security and help to raise money for the repair and cleaning of WC facilities. Coupled with a set of smart cards, tokens or other access control devices, flow capacity is significantly increased compared with any swipe card system, as the card is read in a quarter of a second and does not have to be removed from a wallet or purse. Tensor’s gates, barriers, and turnstiles fully integrate with our smart card and biometric access control systems.

The head of a campaign group has raised concerns about the number of schools that use CCTV cameras. Director of Big Brother Watch, Nick Pickles, said: “This research raises serious questions about the privacy of schoolchildren across Britain, with some schools having one camera for every five pupils.” Almost one in 10 of the schools which use CCTV said cameras were positioned in such locations as changing rooms, while 54 have more than one camera for every 15 students. When your organisation orders a surveillance security system from Tensor you know it will be set-up according to strict guidelines. All digital CCTV systems supplied by Tensor are fully compliant with the UK police requirements. Certification is also an ongoing process that encourages continuous improvement with a focus on customer satisfaction while supporting our organisation's goals. Our accreditation includes the ISO 9001 quality assurance model for organisations that produce, install, and service products; and Secured by Design, an initiative from the Association of Chief Police Officers.

A gang of four hauled a total of £700,000 after breaking into a series of cash machines. During the raids they targeted these models because they knew exactly where to cut so as to disable the machine's security system. A template was even used by the cunning crooks which they placed over an exact spot on the ATM. The men, of no fixed address, raided stores in 17 English counties, from the south-west to the north-east, from November 2010. For the effective ‘two-factor’ security authorisation of an individual to a Tensor time and attendance or access control system fingerprint recognition is used in conjunction with a smart card. Biometric methods of identification work by measuring unique human characteristics as a way to provide proof of identity, for example, finger or iris scanning or dynamic signature verification. Our recommended product for use with a Tensor system at your premises is our smart card access control scanner with built in fingerprint reader.

A primary school has been put into special measures after inspectors found its standards to be “inadequate”. An Ofsted report said the Birmingham-based establishment was “failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education”. Ofsted inspectors visited the premises in June, and said it found there were “weaknesses in teaching in too many classes”. The report also commented: “As a result of weak teaching, achievement is inadequate overall. It is particularly weak in reading.” Tensor can give schools an ‘ABC’ in improving pupils’ attendance and behaviour. WinTA PC Clock is a simple PC based smaller scale booking system from time and attendance experts Tensor that is ideal for organisations where each pupil has access to a PC. PC Clock allows pupils to accurately record their own individual clocking data, without the need for a new time and attendance network. PC Clock's analysis module consists of a scaled-down version of Tensor's acclaimed WinTA Lite time and attendance software.

Some 68,000 staff at NHS Trusts could face one per cent pay cuts after the health service needs to save £20billion over the next four years. The 20 Trusts concerned argue that the changes, which will involve introducing regional pay and cutting holidays, will potentially save as many as 6,000 NHS jobs. Presently the worker wage bill makes up more than two-thirds of employer spend, which the public sector union Unison said the Trusts want to trim to 60 per cent. Your organisation can properly regulate and organise its pay, terms and working conditions via a cutting-edge automated Tensor Time and Attendance network. It contains special rules to accommodate the formal flexitime contracts worked by many public sector employees. Shifts, breaks, lateness recording and pay scales are all dealt with by our Web enabled WinTA systems that can be customised to your requirements. Each member of staff can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness.

A would-be thief was unsuccessful when attempting to break into a Stoke City soccer star’s property. Prominent football players are easy victims of crime because burglars know when players are away from home at a game simply by consulting the fixture list. Not this time, though, as the intruder trying to steal from Michael Owen’s house was caught by police. Owen held a running commentary on social networking website Twitter as he watched the man on his CCTV system. Easy to use Access Control software can be swiftly installed at your site or premises by Tensor. WinACnet creates alarm messages when predetermined actions take place, or if a forced entry occurs. These alarms are immediately emailed to a specified address. Optionally a warning email can be sent if communications to the PC are lost. Free software upgrades to those with maintenance contracts means the system is always up to date. Digital surveillance cameras can be added to your organisation’s security regime by Tensor technicians.