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Travel misery was on the menu for the capital’s commuters at the beginning of the week following the fourth Tube strike since August. The action was over London Underground's (LU) refusal to suspend cuts plans for 12 weeks while talks are held. LU disputes the union line that plans to cut ticket office jobs will threaten safety. Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) stopped work for 24 hours at 1830 GMT on Sunday. Management of staff members at your factory, site or office is made easier with a Tensor Time and Attendance system which deals with clocking, wages, hours and payroll. Different working conditions or patterns are catered for as you can create a wide range of daily working patterns (shifts). These can run past midnight, making night shifts simple to define. The WinTAnet software has a wide range of configuration options to extract payroll information in exactly the correct format. It can share or receive information from third party applications by using readily available interface modules.

The government has said the new Local Enterprise Partnerships, which will also be tasked with promoting economic development, will involve local leaders. The LEPs will replace the Regional Development Agencies, which were a casualty of the government’s budget cuts. The new organisations will need to punch their weight to match their predecessors’ records. An Association of Greater Manchester Authorities report said that their RDA on average had a rate of return of more than five times the original investment in the region. A Tensor Time and Attendance smart card system is the clocking solution for the 21st century and is ideal for increasing productivity and efficiency at work when cutbacks need to be made in the company's structure. The inbuilt report generator makes it simple to get both real-time and archived information, and hosts a range of output styles to suit your company's requirements. A report can also be saved in a variety of formats. Additional features are available, which can be implemented on your time and attendance system to take into account diversity with working rules between different organisations.

Chairman of Devon and Cornwall Police Federation Nigel Rabbitts, when discussing the effects of an employment freeze in his force, said: "In a large geographical area like Devon and Cornwall [it] will be difficult." Mr Rabbitts said savings could be made by reducing the number of community support officers and by staff working on special in-house projects such as IT procurement. He added: "Around 82 per cent of the police budget is spent on wages so if they're looking for cuts it's the obvious place to start." Tensor is an expert in technology which helps personnel departments be more efficient and save money by handling all your Time and Attendance needs in one system. Tensor’s contactless smart cards, key fobs, or fingerprint biometrics provide the fastest and safest method of recording attendance. There are numerous extra software features that can be implemented on your time and attendance system to take into account diversity with working rules between different organisations, like creating different shifts and pay grades. A range of output styles let you export to web pages, spreadsheets or as simple text files.

David Thompson, freshly arrived in the West Midlands as deputy chief constable after three years as Assistant Chief Constable at Greater Manchester Police, said until the details of the comprehensive spending review were announced it was hard to predict its impact on the number of his officers. Plans had been put in place to protect front line delivery. His comments came as Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the current level of police officers was not “sustainable”. Unrestricted by the number of employees and packed with additional features, WinTA Enterprise is specifically designed for firms who require the ultimate time and attendance system to enable them to produce greater productivity and efficiency. It provides total control over working rules, job costing and fire roll call, and biometric technology is easily added to prevent an employee clocking in on someone else’s behalf. Biometrics (use of unique characteristics – in this case fingerprints) would be useful for organisations like the police which need extra security as it provides irrefutable proof of identity.

Education Secretary Michael Russell has given his "full support" to plans of two Scottish councils to merge. He has already met Midlothian and East Lothian representatives to discuss the plan. The councils have discussed the move in an attempt to save money and improve standards within their education departments. Mr Russell said: "I would welcome any ideas that will deliver education services more efficiently. I am determined to protect vital frontline services, such as schools, in the face of the spending cuts to Scottish public finances." Larger organisations would benefit from a Tensor WinTA Enterprise Time and Attendance system, which will help them perform much more efficiently. WinTA Enterprise stores information on up to 1000 production or department jobs. Employees quickly book time against these jobs using a proximity-read smart card or key fob to produce a fully costed analysis and break down of time spent on each one. Software reports show jobs that are over budget or those approaching their budget limit. Using the Auto Clockout feature, workers are automatically clocked out at a certain time.

Processing fake documents and certificates for a bogus college via a legal company resulted in Syed Ahmed being imprisoned for eight and a half years. Ahmed, who was listed as a lecturer in law, was the accredited legal adviser for the company, called Virgil Legal Services Ltd. He was using this firm as a front for an illegal immigration operation which netted millions of pounds for the London based gang. The London Immigration Crime team said a financial asset stripping investigation is taking place. Tensor technology prevents your company falling victim to a fake ID document or certificate being used by a visitor. When visitors, especially contractors, attend your site it is often necessary to inspect identification papers. A visitor monitoring system enables you to both check and scan in visitors’ documents, like licences and vehicle information, thus creating a soft-copy version that can be viewed at a later date. This feature is very useful if questions about a person's identity or credentials later arise, as you have effectively protected yourself against any recriminations.  

A man appeared before magistrates over a case of ‘cowboy clamping’ following an incident when a doctor paid £120 after his car was clamped and reported suspicions about the matter to police. London resident Joseph Ty Hedley Fox was accused of engaging in conduct when not licensed by the private security industry legislation which governs car clamping. He was cleared after a trial because it was uncertain the money paid by the doctor was to remove the clamp or was simply a parking fee. The Tensor range of automatic car park barriers is the number one solution for controlling vehicle access to your site's car park and road entry points. Immediately able to recognise and allow or deny access to personnel, Tensor's parking barriers cater for all sizes of premises and are highly adaptable. Their features include: an extruded aluminium barrier arm, high visibility red reflective striping, arm lengths of up to six metres; and require no routine maintenance. The barriers are also capable of operating alongside any installed control or ticketing systems.  

Another local authority is seeking to take a large slice off its total workforce following the Government’s deficit-busting Spending Review. Lancashire County Council needs to trim £180 million from its budget over the next three years. The GMB union said it is very hard to see where new jobs were to come from to replace the potential 6,000 job losses. It added: “It is also very difficult to see that there will be enough volunteers prepared to leave their jobs in the absence of alternative employment." Featuring comprehensive user-definable working patterns, rosters and shifts, Tensor offers a complete smart card Time and Attendance system. WinTAStart.NET includes a T32xx Smart Card clocking station, 25 Smart Cards, software including all the features to manage time and attendance recording for up to 50 people. Clocking station features include: 1MB on-board memory; a 6 line x 21 character / graphics display; a control output which can operate an electronic lock or shift change siren; and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) in case of mains failure.  

Record low crime figures have been recorded in Hartlepool, thanks to a recent campaign. A total of 492 crimes were registered in the latest monthly figures, a drop of nearly 30 per cent compared to the same period last year. The figures follow rates being slashed in half during recent years. Officers are putting the decline down to the Respect Hartlepool campaign, which has been thwarting shoplifting and other offences. The campaign asks people who live, work and socialise in the town to 'Respect Yourself, Respect Others, Respect Hartlepool'. Time & Attendance North East have designed WinTAnet, a complete Time and Attendance and integrated security system for 20 to 10,000-plus people, in conjunction with a new range of colourful, .NET and wireless enabled smart card and biometric clocking and access control equipment. Current customers can upgrade without having to change their T32xx or T25xx clocking stations. As well as access control it deals with all major hours calculation methods; plus job rostering, absence planning and entitlement management, and absenteeism and lateness reporting.  

Aware that there are still more than 5,000 surplus places in schools countywide, education officials in Carmarthenshire are finding it tough identifying which schools to shut down. Under the latest update to its Modernising Education Programme, the Welsh council says there are 10 schools not thought to be viable in the long term. The report listed another 31 to be considered but members of the council's education scrutiny committee called for the list to be removed in case it appeared their future had already been decided. Tensor supply a range of time and attendance systems which deal with all methods of job rostering, budgeting and costing, plus calculation of payroll, wages and hours. PC Clock's analysis module consists of a scaled-down version of Tensor's acclaimed WinTA Lite time and attendance software and suits a school or college. Pupils (or employees) are simply presented with an input screen on their PC allowing them to clock in and out. It is a cost-effective method of ensuring that your organisation remains compliant with any regional and national legislation.

A council has instituted a pay freeze because it needs to save a total of £40m over four years. Senior management and councillors at Oxford City Council have agreed to a pay freeze and staff will not receive any annual pay rises, as part of the draft budget. About 60% of the budget gap (which is about £6m) will be met by efficiency savings, while about 25% will be addressed through increased council fees and charges. Free swimming for children could also be affected. All frequently used methods of hours calculation, wage structure and shift patterns (including overtime and flexitime) are handled by the WinTA Net Time & Attendance and integrated security management system from Tensor. Available in Lite, Small Business and Enterprise versions, the system is cost-effective for those employing from 10 to 10,000-plus staff. The system 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.

Quangos – short for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation – are seen by many, including the current administration, as a waste of money. Consequently the government, keen to make savings, has abolished many of them, putting many thousands of public sector workers out of a job. Half of these bodies in the department of health have gone, as confirmed by the minister concerned, Andrew Lansley. Doctors and nurses' groups have criticised the decision to axe organisations like the Health Protection Agency. Tensor can make savings for employers and organisations with its state of the art time and attendance clocking systems. Under this regime, employees clock in and out using smart cards, the data from which is used to create a wide range of daily working patterns (shifts), with either fixed or flexitime rules. These can run past midnight, making night shifts simple to define. The WinTA Lite software has a familiar Windows™ interface, providing quick and easy access to information. A range of output styles let you export to web pages, spreadsheets or as simple text files.