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Raiders have hit a church for a third time in as many months after taking advantage of the high black market prices for metal. Lead was stolen on all occasions. Property steward Ken Pennells arrived at the West London church to see the thieves had struck yet again. He said: “My reaction was unprintable. We're looking at improving security, CCTV cameras and things like that, we just didn't expect the thieves to come back so quickly.” CCTV tracking, secure sliding gates and barriers are just some of the securing devices Tensor can deliver to your organisation in order to protect your vulnerable site. Static or automatic bollards provide a genuine deterrent and the automatic ones fully integrate with our smart card and biometric access control systems. With a range of styles and designs, your bollards are available in any RAL colour as a special order at low prices. Our bollards have a range of uses, including protecting vulnerable points like corners of buildings or deterring ram-raiders.  

Business Secretary Vince Cable said after business had been concluded on the £291 million sale of a steel plant: "Coming just over a year after the plant was mothballed, it is a tribute to both companies involved – Tata Steel and SSI. I welcome the return of steelmaking to this historic steel site later this year.” Mr Cable was referring to a deal which should secure 700 jobs following months of negotiations involving Thai company SSI and Tata Steel's Teesside Cast Products. If your company is expanding, moving to a new site or taking on workers, you need a comprehensive time and attendance payroll system which works over multiple sites. WinTA Enterprise is the multi-user, networked, multi-site Time and Attendance, system intended for larger companies. It can store up to 2000 employees on a single Time & Attendance clock, to which extra scanners may be attached for Access Control, Job Booking, and Job Costing. WinTA Enterprise operates both the T32xx and T256x clocking stations and can record employee details for an unlimited number of people.

It may seem strange for a profession to be recommended a pay rise of almost a quarter in these austere times, but that is the case for Scottish councillors according to an independent review of their salaries. The Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee says their increased workload justifies the rise. The total pay bill would increase from about £22.8 million to £28.3 million per year. The report argued this sum must be seen in the context of councils’ £10.9 billion revenue budget. WinTA Lite is the latest in Tensor’s proven range of complete Windows™ based time and attendance products which meet your firm’s clocking and payroll requirements. The WinTA Lite software allows the creation of many daily working patterns, with either fixed or flexitime rules; plus overtime, and paid and unpaid breaks. WinTA Lite stores information on up to 1000 production or department jobs. Using a smart card or key fob, employees book time against these jobs to produce a fully costed analysis and breakdown of time spent on each one.  

Forces in other parts of the world are following the lead of a business crime strategy which has won international praise. Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce will provide administrative support for a police-involved scheme which advises businesses on fighting crime. Scott Knowles, the Chamber's deputy chief executive, believes the public-private partnership is unique to Notts. He said: "It is absolutely crucial that firms do all they can to protect their premises, equipment, product holdings, staff and customers.” Tensor can aid firms realise that aim with our comprehensive choice of smart card access control, door and registration point control, visitor control and security devices. Access Control profiles are easily created or customised to suit your particular site, and can be varied minute-by-minute. An anti pass back facility limits the same card being used by more than one person, thus tightening control on who gains access to your premises. A near-real time graphical display shows doors being opened or closed, those with alarm status set and those with forced entry.  

A council has come under fire for preventing people from using its town hall toilets at the same time as it persuaded more businesses to open up their own facilities. A sign warning people away from ‘spending a penny’ at the town hall was quickly taken down after the authority realised an employee had mistakenly banned people from entering. At the same time Ealing Council announced its Community Toilet Scheme has been extended to business premises in West Ealing. Councils and private companies can continue to employ toilet facilities for members of the public via the installation of coin operated Tensor Toilet Turnstiles. Glass Turnstiles will give you all the benefits of controlling access to your toilet facilities, yet fit seamlessly and elegantly into any high-status environment where appearance is equal to functionality. Allowing optimum pedestrian throughput in an elegant, sophisticated style, the glass turnstiles are an essential element for any lobby environment. They can cope with high traffic volumes and with severe operating conditions.

A Liberal Democrat amendment was agreed upon by Bolton Council in a tempestuous budget meeting where hundreds of public service jobs were cut. Cllr Roger Hayes, Lib Dem leader, put forward the amendment which included reducing the number of the Executive from 10 to seven, reducing members’ allowances by five to 10 per cent depending on responsibility, and going back to a slimmed down committee system. Other methods employed to slash £41 million from the budget included stopping the council’s Scene newspaper. Tensor's WinTA networked time and attendance systems and personnel software saves your organisation time and money. Employees clock in on the fastest throughput time available using their contactless smart cards at the clocking stations, at which they can book jobs and absences. The software can create multiple shift patterns available per day via the AutoSelect Groups function. The WinTA system will select the most appropriate shift depending on when an employee starts work. If you move an employee's shift, WinTA will automatically assign the correct shift to the employee.  

Operation Serenity sees British Transport Police officers patrolling stations across Greater Manchester and on problematic routes and services to deter trouble makers. They are particularly concentrating on retail theft and anti-social behaviour at Bolton’s main train station which will have CCTV cameras added for the first time as part of a major revamp. Inspector Michelle Wedderburn said of the operation: “The week of action is designed to tackle anti-social behaviour at the early stages, before problematic behaviour is able to escalate.” A full range of digital CCTV equipment, including body, bullet, covert and dome cameras – plus monitors and software – are available from Tensor’s associates CCTV Surveillance Ltd to protect your premises. Body cameras are supplied in more conventional CCTV bodies. We sell body cameras from all major manufacturers and can configure a system exactly to your requirements. Evidence quality digital CCTV body cameras require a lens to be attached to them and these generally have to be bought separately, but this allows you to choose the best lens for your needs.  

An investigation by the BBC has found organised crime gangs are behind more than half of all shoplifting in the UK. The biggest shoplifting team is believed to be run by one of Scotland's most notorious crime family, making millions in the past year on this activity alone. The BBC probe found that half of all shoplifting is now committed by professional steal-to-order gangs. The crime of shoplifting has soared up over the past year by nearly 20%, costing retailers almost £5bn. The T3512 is a one door smart card access control system that has everything you need for controlling access through a single door and is suitable for all types of businesses. It comprises a T3511 controller, the latest .NET PC based Access Control multi-lingual software, magnetic door release, push button, break glass and 10 Smart Cards. It features early warning LED's, audible alerts, tamper detection. It also adheres to international security standards applicable to Access Control systems; EN50133 Parts 1, 7 and 2; GW18, PC79 and DD243I2002.  

Glasgow Caledonian University replied to criticisms of its management pay, saying that 70% of the university's highest paid staff were academics. Glasgow Caledonian Combined Union Committee (CUC) had highlighted salary figures from the university's annual accounts and said that since 2006, 373 teaching and support jobs had been lost mostly through an extended voluntary redundancy scheme. The CUC added that over the same period higher paid staff, who earn more than £70,000 per year, had increased from 13 to 41. Tensor’s unbeatable time and attendance networks, for example WinTA Enterprise, offer comprehensive user-definable working patterns, rosters and shifts, including annualised hours and flexi patterns. Contactless smart cards are used to operate your time and attendance, access control and visitor monitoring systems. Each card reader transmits a 125 KHz frequency field (the electromagnetic field), which is picked up by an aerial in the smart card. The smart card microchip, is a passive device which holds a unique factory encoded ID number that cannot be duplicated, making it very secure indeed.  

A county council which has had to offload 1,200 jobs this year is set to pay a six-figure annual sum to employ a ‘broadband tsar’. Hampshire County Council is spending £193,000 per year on a two-year broadband project. The sum includes the pay package of the project director, a salary for a more junior officer and £30,000 project development costs. The new project director will head a bid to improve high-speed Internet access across the county, especially rural areas. Tensor’s WinTA Time and Attendance software enables a summary of clocking details to be viewed at-a-glance, showing individuals or groups of employees. Numerous pay grades and working patterns can been set up, including night shifts. Groups are used to define sequences of shift patterns. Each group can be set up to override the normal pattern and use a specific shift on public holidays. Overtime is easily monitored with up to four different pay bands in each shift. Periodic Overtime is used to calculate overtime on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.  

Network Rail said it had been using its anti-theft device SmartWater to protect its cables for a number of months. This was in response to overnight thefts of 50 yards of copper power cable and 50 yards of telecommunications cable which halted services between Bolton and Blackburn and disabled the signalling system. The invisible fluid is sprayed on the cables and then leaves its mark on anything it comes into contact with, such as the thieves' skin or tools. In these days of heightened security, Tensor's gates, barriers, and turnstiles fully integrate with our smart card and biometric access control systems giving you full jurisdiction over movement and access in and around your site. When absolute entrance or exit security is required, full height turnstiles that need no routine maintenance are the perfect solution. Ideal in unmanned locations, they provide maximum security together with a strong visual deterrent. Offering unrivalled reliability, Tensor's full height turnstiles are tamper-resistant and weatherproof ensuring they can last in even the most unforgiving of environments.  

A new report says UK workers do £29 billion worth of unpaid overtime in total each week. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) commissioned the report, which said unpaid overtime was likely to go up in the public sector because of heavy job losses expected during this year as a result of Government spending cuts. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "With tough economic conditions making employers reluctant to recruit, existing staff are picking up much of the increasing work load.” Designed for smaller companies, WinTA Lite is the latest in Tensor’s proven range of time and attendance products, from simple collection of employees' clocking data, through to job costing and extensive labour hours analysis. It handles Time and Attendance, European Working Time Directive checking and reporting, multiple shifts, flexitime and job costing. Overtime is easily monitored, and both paid and unpaid breaks are easy to define and calculate. A demonstration edition of the WinTA Lite package is available as a free trial.