New Sainsbury’s Nine Elms Point opens

The new Sainsbury’s Nine Elms Point has opened today creating 250 new jobs for the local community.

Former long-serving colleague, Ann Martin, joined store manager, Andy Robins, to cut the official ribbon of the new store and declare it open for business.

The new store sees Sainsbury’s return to the area, with the company having had a store there previously for over 30 years. The old store was demolished to pave the way for the current redevelopment of Nine Elms.

Commenting on the opening, store manager Andy, said: “It is fantastic to have Sainsbury’s back at the heart of a community that we previously served for over 30 years. We have been counting down the days to Wednesday 24th August, and can’t wait to showcase what we have to offer in store.”

Lambeth Cllr Jack Hopkins, Cabinet Member for Regeneration said: “We’ll be pleased to see the familiar faces of returning staff and welcome new employees from Lambeth and Wandsworth. The new store is another mark of progress in and around Vauxhall.”

Wandsworth Council Leader and co-chair of the Vauxhall Nine Elms Partnership Cllr Ravi Govindia said: “Congratulations to the Sainsbury’s team and a very warm welcome to their new and returning staff. The upgraded store is very impressive and the opening is another important milestone in this fast moving regeneration programme.”

The store, which has ample car parking, is open 7 days a week, offering a wide range of food and non-food products, as well as a café and clothing range.

During the build, the Nine Elms Point team has also been involved in a number of local community projects, including helping with general improvements to the Wyvil and Hemans estates, as well as charity donations and making links with local schools. From opening, the store colleagues will have Trinity Hospice as their charity of the year.

10% discount on Santander Cycles Business Accounts

Looking for a cleaner, greener way for your staff to get around?

With a Santander Cycles Business Account you can simply hire a bike to commute in, ride to a meeting or go wherever you fancy on your lunch break; then return it to any docking station 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Within the Vauxhall One BID zone there are 14 stations with over 300 docking points and over 11,000 bikes at over 750 docking stations across London.

There are two account types to choose from, Pooled or Individual. Both benefit from reduced travel costs, increased productivity, corporate social responsibility as well as simple Direct Debit payments, sequential invoicing and automated reporting.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan encourages all businesses in London to sign up to take advantage of Santander Cycles Business Account. TfL are offering a 10% discount on all new accounts that register for TfL’s Cycling Workplaces programme. For more information including how to sign up please click here.

MPS Security Update Message – Operation Hercules

It is important to stress that there is currently no intelligence to suggest that there is an imminent threat to London and the United Kingdom.

This update is sent on behalf Commander Matt Twist, Gold London for Operation Hercules.

In January the Commissioner as part of his commitment to keeping London safe and to meet the threat of determined and deadly armed attackers announced that the Met would grow the number of armed officers by 600.

As the first of those armed officers are now fully, highly trained and operationally ready this operation develops how they can best be deployed to be most effective.

Operation Hercules

Today, Wednesday 3rd August 2016 the Met has started Operation Hercules, this will visibly deploy more armed officers on proactive operations and targeted patrols, both in vehicles and on foot, at locations across London.

This is not based on any specific intelligence, but is a long term response to best use the increasing number of armed officers we have as part of our commitment to make London as hostile an environment as possible for terrorists.

That means the locations, the types of tactics and the numbers of officers deployed at once will continually change to maximise the effect of our deployment and avoid any predictability.

Our armed officers will work alongside specialist colleagues, including Neighbourhood officers, dogs, TSG, Marine Policing Unit and Mounted Branch, using ANPR technology and tactics such as vehicle check points, with the specific aim of deterring or disrupting any terrorist activity.

We know that talking to Londoners is vital, both for public confidence and intelligence gathering. These officers will be actively engaging with the public.

Our dedicated neighbourhood officers, who are increasing in number, will continue to play a key part as the eyes and ears of the Met within our communities.

Our efforts to tackle gun and gang crime will continue as before, and as they are separate to this will not be affected.

It is a sad reality, and one that we must prepare for, that is highly likely our City will face an attack by terrorists. We learn from every terrorist attack around the world, including the horrific events in Paris in November 2015 and recently in Nice, and that learning shows us that attack methodology is constantly changing.

We will never be complacent – our tactics must be kept under constant review, and we can increase our numbers and change our tactical options based on what the threat level tells us.

In the event of an attack, we have more specialist officers available. There is now a 24 hour immediate response team of our most highly trained and skilled Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officers.

These officers are the very best trained and most experienced and would be deployed to resolve the most severe of attacks.

They can operate in the air, on the river and have armoured vehicles and motorcycles at the ready.

There is nowhere in London that is beyond our ability to respond.

We are doing all we can – both through our specialist detectives in our counter terrorism command; working with partner agencies; gathering community intelligence and high profile deployments of large numbers of officers such as Hercules – to keep the Capital safe.

Key to the safety of London is our highly trained, very specialist firearms officers who would run towards danger to respond to any attack.

However, we are not stepping away from our proud tradition of a predominantly unarmed service, 92% of our officers will remain unarmed. We need to recognise the changing threat picture and change to deal with it, just as we have changed our tactics over the many years that we have been dealing with a threat from terrorism to our Capital.

We cannot do it alone and need the public’s help – if you have suspicions then tell us.

Current Threat Levels

The threat to the UK from international terrorism remains unchanged at SEVERE, as it has been since August 2014, meaning an attack is highly likely.

For more information please see: https://www.mi5.gov.uk.

The UK police and security and intelligence services are working tirelessly and at a pace to confront the terrorist threat and keep the public safe. We urge the public to be alert but not alarmed and report anything suspicious to the confidential anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321. In an emergency always call 999.

Vauxhall One opposes business rate revaluation.

On Thursday 28th July Chair of Vuaxhall One, Aseem Sheikh wrote to Secretary of State Sajid Javid to lay out the BID’s opposition to proposed business rate revaluation, which can be read in full below.

Dear Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP,

The proposed business rate revaluation, due to come into force in April 2017, will hit London businesses disproportionately. Central London businesses could face average business rate rises of over 22% although in many areas the increase will be far higher.

The main shopping streets in London’s West End, for example, are likely to see an average 80% rise and many growing areas such as Vauxhall will experience increases above the average.

In most cases the rise is not as a result of improved business performance but simply a reflection of the lack of supply of retail and commercial space. These huge increases will therefore be a major new cost on central London businesses.

Given the economic uncertainty caused by the recent vote to leave the European Union, this is a particularly difficult time to burden London businesses with significant new tax rises.

Vauxhall One BID represents 200 businesses.We call upon the government to freeze the proposed business rate revaluation. If this is not possible, then to introduce a transitional relief scheme to limit any annual rise to no more than 12.5%.

Yours Sincerely

Aseem Sheikh,

Chairman

Vauxhall One