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Under a radical overhaul, Cardiff council has taken over the enforcement of most of the parking laws from South Wales Police as part of a wider transport strategy. To issue tickets on parking restrictions like yellow lines, a new team will consist of 35 on-street civil parking enforcement officers (CEOs) and four off-street CEOs, who will deal with council-run car parks. It will be headed by four senior CEOs and one team leader. There will be four response teams, who will be able to act immediately upon reports from the public about illegal parking. Tensor plc is quite happy with the responsibility of handling unauthorised parking on private property. The company deals in many methods of access control and barrier technology. You can control access to your site’s entrance with our automatic barriers, bollards, gates, turnstiles and parking posts. All posts come with a two-year warranty and can be produced in your company colours for total branding. A complete and easy to use employee and barrier access control smart card system will handle access for both individuals and their vehicles.

Police tracked down a criminal gang who moved from region to region in order to evade capture. The group roamed the west, north-west and Wales to rob cash machines, shops and homes. Officers are convinced their success in the Merseyside region preventing cash-in-transit robberies persuaded the two gang leaders to try their luck in Wales. Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Erasmus, of Gwent police, said: “They were clearly very surprised the high level of our investigation here compared with what they were used to in Liverpool.” Protect your site or premises from unauthorised personnel with Tensor Access – a simple to use, highly secure way of tackling the problem of keeping access to areas or buildings under control, as well as monitoring who is present. Among the benefits are photographic recognition and checking of employees, visitors and contractors; fingerprint scanners for high security areas; and seamless interfacing to our other systems of Attendance Monitoring, Visitor Control and Personnel. Tensor’s expertise extends to installing surveillance cameras are available for single or multiple use in homes or for integration with the Access Control smart card technology.  

Issues such as public sector pay and pensions, and 25 per cent budget cuts across all governmental departments, mean the police are under scrutiny in terms of their performance and by how much the Home Office will trim their resources. North of the border, Chief Constable Colin McKerracher said 1,600 officers served the north east Grampian region, the highest number in the force's history. Mr McKerracher also highlighted his force continued to outstrip targets, including a year-on-year drop in anti-social behaviour by 12 per cent. To manage on an ever-decreasing budget companies with under 250 personnel to large multinational corporations, how about enlisting Tensor’s Time and Attendance smart card technology. The customised reports allow you to get the information you need to make on the spot personnel decisions. Among the many features included in the system are: Job Booking and Job Costing; All-In-One Time and Attendance recording; extensive European Working Time Directive checking and reporting; and customised patterns, rosters and shifts. We have Time and Attendance regional offices serving, England, Scotland and Wales to give you 24 hour support when and where you need it.  

The top tier of National Health Service management is being axed since the coalition wants NHS administrator costs to be slashed by almost half over the next four years. All primary care trusts (PCTs) will be gone in three years’ time in order to save billions from the NHS budget. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley refused to give any guarantee that PCT staff (including clinicians, managers and administrators) would find similar jobs in the new set-up, where managing care will be the responsibility of family doctors. Much of the work is expected to be contracted out by GPs. To make it easier for organisations with reduced budgets, Tensor plc provides and installs a comprehensive Time and Attendance clocking and recording system with Job Booking and Job Costing, to maximise productivity and efficiency in the workplace. The software holds many features, such as in the Employee screens an index tab system is used to hold different categories of information. Some of these are user definable fields, including user definable tables and arrays. Users can generate reports using a range of parameters.  

A senior officer said police jobs will go if forces are required to make 12 per cent savings. Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents' Association, was reacting to the situation that the Home Office, which funds the police, could be facing cuts of a quarter. "I personally think it's inevitable [that we will lose officers from the beat]," Mr Johnston told BBC Radio: "You can't take 12% out of any equation when 83% of your budget is on personnel, I think that, yes, we will be losing police officers and the sooner the police service accepts it and we get on with limiting the damage the better." With this prediction in mind your security needs are in good hands with Tensor, as we can provide your organisation with a sophisticated access control system. We currently have two dedicated systems available, which are operated by our contactless smart cards and key fobs and accurately allow and deny access to specific areas of your site. These systems are fully customisable, and come complete with access report generating software allowing you to track activity around your site. Surveillance and biometric technology can be grafted on for extra security.  

Official figures reveal that offending across England and Wales is at its lowest level since 1981 – in the last year it fell by 8 per cent. Home Office chief statistician David Blunt said improved security measures, including alarms, better door and window locks as well as vehicle immobilisers are responsible for falling property crime. He said the trend has been reflected in many other developed countries during the same period. Mr Blunt said: "There is no single definitive explanation and it seems likely that a number of different factors have contributed in different ways." Investing in a CCTV Surveillance camera and recording system will give you a better than even chance of avoiding being a victim of property crime at your home or business. Our digital CCTV evidence quality systems are custom-made, installed and looked after exactly to your requirements, whether you want one camera or a whole network, and are available for indoor and outdoor environments, or day and night shooting. We also offer technology from other members of the Tensor group of security companies dealing with smart card access control.  

Police spending cuts could hamper the fight against crime in England and Wales, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary has warned. The Chief Inspector said a "total redesign" of how officers work, such as shift patterns, could save 12%. He said further cuts would hit police availability "unless it was prioritised over everything else". The analysis of the future of policing comes in a joint report from the Chief Inspector, Sir Denis O'Connor, the Audit Commission (which covers England) and the Wales Audit Office – just as spending on policing faces a drop by a quarter in national debt-busting measures. Tensor can provide your organisation with a sophisticated access control system guaranteed to improve your security requirements if police resources are cut. Access Lite is the entry-level package of our range of proven Windows™ based access control systems which bar entry to unauthorised personnel. It comprises a complete smart card access control system, and includes sophisticated software for monitoring access patterns, alarm status, and detecting forced entries. It is ideal for smaller companies with less than 250 employees or made up of many small sites, and comes with 50 smart cards.  

The lack of a public toilet in many town centres and leisure areas has a hidden social cost – it effectively makes older people a prisoner in their own homes. Age UK, who used to be called Help the Aged, published a paper entitled "Nowhere to Go", which highlights this matter. Twelve per cent of older people (1.2 million) feel trapped in their own home, it says. Furthermore, about 100,000 never go out. The organisation suggests that lack of public toilets is a major factor in this, and the situation will worsen as toilet provision continues to decline. In order to aid the increase in public toilets, Tensor plc’s toilet turnstiles enable public conveniences to be built in towns to a good standard by local councils and provide the finance for their upkeep – they do cost money to maintain and clean. The durable coin operated turnstiles are adaptable, so that the coin box can be positioned to the most accessible point. They then permit entry with a small charge. Tensor’s turnstiles can cope with high volumes of traffic, while causing minimal disruption. For more information on a Tensor turnstile, barrier or gate, please contact our sales team. Half height and full height versions are available.  

There may be a move towards another strike ballot at British Airways as cabin crew have rejected by a ratio of two-to-one the airline's latest pay offer. The number of votes cast, just over 5,000, represented less than half of the unionised cabin crew and was well below previous ballots that saw more than 70% of them express their views. The no vote raises the prospect of more strikes, as union leaders plan their next move in a dispute which stretches back to before Christmas. BA shares stood 1.4% lower at 199p shortly after the announcement. You can keep up morale at your workforce with an efficient Time and Attendance clocking system – it is so comfortable working with patterns, rosters and shifts that disputes are less likely to arise. Additional features are available, which can be implemented on your smart card-based time and attendance system to take into account diversity with working rules between different organisations. Secondary Pay Bands, for example, means that certain pay bands pay into other bands either on a 1:1 basis or by using a multiplier. Installation support and training is available.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude reacted angrily to Assistant Commissioner John Yates's comments that spending cuts would increase the risk of terrorist attack, accusing him of "shroud-waving" and "alarmism". Mr Yates said the Metropolitan Police (Met) would see £87m wiped from its anti-terror budget. Mr Maude – the man David Cameron has put in charge of ensuring greater accountability from public servants – warned Mr Yates against "alarming" the public. Beef up your office security with Tensor’s easy to use Access Control hardware. Our access controllers can be networked together to create a powerful computer controlled security infrastructure. The T3510 Low Cost 4 Scanner Controller, working with simple smart card entry, can be configured in many different arrangements, controlling a smaller number of doors at first and then more at a later date as need and/or budget permits. As the security network grows and requires more control points, further T3510’s are installed. This “building block” approach is the most cost effective way to install access control. The T3510 has a volt-free input that can be wired directly into your fire alarm system.  

Inequality of pay has been smoothed over by BT following the possibility of industrial action. The chief executive, Ian Livingston, saw his bonus more than triple last year, taking his total pay package, including shares, above £3m – while the workforce were initially offered a 2% pensionable pay rise from April 2010 and a 3% rise from January 2011. The union had previously demanded a 5% rise for 2010/11 alone. The company had also offered lump sum payments worth up to £500 for each team member but these have now been removed given the revised 3% terms agreed over 39 months. Using Tensor’s Time and Attendance computerised smart card clocking regime, however, your company can ensure all pay rates, shifts and other complicated wage matters are all streamlined and accurately recorded to prevent any disputes. With the software, among other features, you can view all time and attendance information for an employee or a single department; or quickly find the details you need with the ability to sort on any column or perform a surname search at the touch of a button.

We reveal some of the 10 worst places in the country for burglaries in the UK – in fact London, Burnley and Manchester top the hit list. Londoners have the highest risk of having their homes burgled, with 46.35 burglaries per 1000 people; runner-up Burnley has 24.63; and Manchester 23.76, although the Mancunian figures have gone down in the past decade. The area which has the lowest rate is Ceredigion in Wales, a tiny 2.84 burglaries per 1000 people. Tensor can provide some simple, cost-effective steps to protect your office or home from burglars. Our easy to use Access Control hardware is the most cost effective way for your business to protect its premises. The controllers can be networked together to create a powerful computer controlled security infrastructure. This provides a platform for installing other Tensor products such as Visitor Monitoring, Automatic Number Plate recognition and digital CCTV; as well as controlling all your doors, car park barriers and turnstiles. Evidence quality digital CCTV is ideal for both businesses and homes and can be customised to suit a range of needs and budget.