HOW BUSINESSES MADE CHANGES AND ARE MOVING FORWARD UNDER THE NEW EU RELATIONSHIP
MAN HANDED HIMSELF IN AT POLICE STATION
When Alison Wood, 25, and Mhairi Cochrane, 23, launched their sustainable hygiene brand, Lilypads, last year, they knew they would have to prepare for the end of the Brexit transition period pretty quickly.
Based in Edinburgh, theirs is a truly international business. Their reusable period pads are manufactured in Lithuania, and as well as donating 10 per cent of their revenue to subsidise period products in places such as Kenya, they also export to Spain, Holland and Denmark.
And as the UK has now left the EU customs union, all businesses that trade with Europe must follow new rules on exports, imports, hiring and travel. Unless you’ve prepared for the changes, your business may face disruption.
For Alison, preparation meant running through a checklist to make sure the company was ready for new customs declarations, VAT rules and border control changes.
Although there was additional admin to take care of, Alison wasn’t daunted by it. “We already have our international exports,” she says, “so it didn’t seem like that big a jump. I got used to commodity codes and we had professional advice from Business Gateway, who made it easy.
“I used the Brexit Checker tool on the gov.uk website and that flagged some of the things we hadn’t thought about. We export British
materials and bring them back from Lithuania, so we must now declare how much material we’ve sent and how many pads are coming back.”
And now that Lilypads has its processes in place, things have gone smoothly post-transition and the company is looking forward to more growth.
“When we export to the EU, we have to declare what’s in the envelope, but we’re already doing this for our international customers so it’s basically a sticker that says ‘reusable pads’ with our company name,” explains Alison.
“We pre-printed the stickers and stuck them on envelopes, so it took a bit of admin, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s been a few months of growth and change, but it’s looking fine.”
If you run a business and haven’t yet checked what you need to do to carry on trading with the EU, the time is now: see the checklist at gov.uk/ transition.
A PERVERT showed police officers sickening indecent images on his phone and confessed what he had been up to.
Police visited Marc Mallaby’s home to search it for child abuse pictures but he wasn’t in when they called.
Newcastle Crown Court heard he later presented himself at the police station.
Jessica Slaughter, prosecuting, said: “He said he knew why they wanted to speak to him and he handed over a mobile phone with the picture gallery open showing indecent images of children.”
The court heard officers then went to his home in Sunderland, to carry out a search, in April 2019.
On his mobile phone there were 17 of the most serious, category A, images and 148 videos, 30 category B images and 20 videos and 348 category C images and 16 videos. There was also an image and two videos depicting women having sex with a dog.
The court heard the children were aged between seven and 10 years old.
A further 43 indecent images were found on a computer tower.
And police checked for search terms commonly entered by those looking for such material and found more than 6,000 hits.
Miss Slaughter said: “In interview he said he is not sexually attracted to adults and finds it difficult to have a normal life as a result of this.”
Mallaby, of Cricklewood Road, Hylton
Castle, Sunderland, admitted making indecent images of children between 2015 and 2019 and possession of extreme pornography.
He was sentenced to 10 months suspended for 18 months with 150 hours unpaid work and will be subject to a sexual harm prevention order and sex offender registration.
Judge Sarah Mallett said he is a “solitary, socially awkward individual” who is likely to lose his job as a result of his conviction.
Tony Davis, defending, said: “He has led an isolated existence. He has no previous convictions and has sought to establish contact with professionals in the field.”
HUNDREDS of electric scooters will be hitting the streets of Sunderland this month.
It has been announced that the city will benefit from 300 e-scooters, with the first 100 available from late March.
Neuron Mobility has been chosen by Sunderland City Council to deploy the environmentally-friendly fleet of twowheeled vehicles, in a bid to get more people out of their cars and cut pollution caused by road traffic.
The announcement comes after rental e-scooters launched in Newcastle this week.
They can be hired using the Neuron mobile app, but you must be 18 years old to ride them and must have a full or provisional driving licence.
Zachary Wang, CEO of Neuron Mobility, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Sunderland City Council to
launch their e-scooter trial. Sunderland is a fantastic city with great transport links and strong green credentials.
“As our second location in the North East we are excited to be able to bring our e-scooters to even more people in the region and help to cement e-scooters as an integral part of the North East’s transport mix.”
Concerns have been raised about safety, with the Middlesbrough scheme hitting the headlines when teenagers were spotted riding the vehicles on the A19.
But Neuron said it will deploy a dedicated safety team as part of the trial. They will be armed with hospital-grade disinfectant to keep e-scooters and helmets clean and germ-free.
The orange e-scooters are Gps-enabled and will use Geofencing technology to control where they are ridden and parked, and how fast they can travel in certain area.
Each e-scooter will be fitted with a unique licence plate for easy identification and to promote responsible use.
Leader of Sunderland City Council, Councillor Graeme Miller said: “Sunderland has set down its credentials and plans to become a carbon-neutral city, and if e-scooters can play a part in this then it’s very important that we find out more through this trial.”
A SINGLE dad said his life would be “destroyed” if he was banned for drink driving.
Junior Edgerton, also known as Pederson, told police he had drunk four cans of lager and a rum and coke before getting behind the wheel.
South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court heard he was stopped by police in South Shields on January 22 and officers could smell alcohol on his breath
A roadside breath test found he had 43 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, the legal limit is 35.
He told the court he had drunk at around 8pm and believed he was under the legal limit to drive by 1am.
Representing himself in court, Edgerton pleaded with magistrates not to impose a driving ban due to the impact it would have on his life.
He said: “I have a lot going on, I have changed my life massively. It’s going to destroy my life, I have worked hard for the last 11 years.”
Edgerton told the court that he takes his son to school every day and regularly travels to visit family and his girlfriend in South Shields.
He also cares
for his mum who has multiple sclerosis, and is currently studying to be a plumber at college.
The 35-year-old, of Birchington Avenue, Grangetown, Cleveland, was banned from driving for 12 months after pleading guilty to the offence.
He must also pay a £239 fine.