Manchester City has announced a new partnership in the UK and Asia Pacific with tappit, a solution that provides cashless experiences at sports, festivals and entertainment events. The deal will explore the use of this technology at Club events across the world, including global live screenings and mass participation events.

tappit share Manchester City’s passion for digital innovation, with the technology enabling fans to have a better experience at an event via easy-to-use cashless payment methods. Insights generated by the technology also provide the Club with the opportunity for continuous development based on fan usage.

Manchester City will work with tappit to offer a variety of added-value features for fans, with tappit’s worldwide footprint meaning the Club’s global fanbase will also benefit from this new partnership during live experiences throughout the season.

Damian Willoughby, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at City Football Group, said: “Manchester City are excited to be entering this partnership with tappit, whose cashless technology has proven popular at many live events. The partnership comes at a time where football and technology are more closely linked than ever before – working with tappit will certainly help us utilise this.

We want our fans to enjoy interacting with the Club when attending one of our many live events around the world and we hope this partnership will give our fans some great new experiences.”

Jason Thomas, CEO at tappit, commented: “We are delighted to be working with Manchester City and its fanbase across the world. We are committed to helping clubs deepen relationships with their supporters and Manchester City shares our vision to deliver an incredible fan experience. On top of this, the fact that they are a truly global organisation matches both our ambition and geographic reach, making them the perfect sporting partner.”

Manchester has become the first city in North West England to benefit from the free InLinkUK from BT service, which already has over 200,000 subscribers across the UK. It offers the UK’s fastest free public wi-fi plus a range of digital services, including local council and community information.

The first 17 InLinks being installed in central Manchester provide ultrafast wi-fi speeds of up to one gigabit per second (1Gbps), the fastest free public wi-fi service available in the UK. The InLinks also provide free phone calls to UK landlines and mobiles, rapid mobile device charging, the BT Phone Book app, as well as easy access to charity helplines. Manchester joins London, Southampton, Leeds, Glasgow, Swansea, Sheffield, Gateshead and Newcastle as the latest city to benefit from the new service.

InLinks mean more space on pavements, as on average, each InLink replaces two BT payphones, with 34 set to be removed in Manchester. BT’s iconic red phone boxes will remain.

The first of the fully-accessible InLinks have already gone live on Portland Street. Further locations, including High Street and Peter Street are expected to join them in the coming weeks.

Home to the Manchester Arena, one of the biggest indoor arenas in the world, and the world’s oldest library, Manchester is a key location for visitors and tourists. This new communications service in the heart of the city will help cement Manchester as one of the UK’s most digitally connected cities.

Manchester City Council and the local community are also benefiting from the digital displays on the InLinks that display real-time information, including the weather forecast and other local information. Each InLink provides more than 1,000 hours of local messaging a year, acting as a community notice board for the local area. These services are provided to the community at no public cost, as the project is funded by advertising revenue.

Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council welcome the news: “I am pleased that Manchester is the first city in the North West to welcome the InLinks. We have always been a city with an eye for opportunity and believe the range of free services the InLinks provide is a significant contribution to the Greater Manchester Digital Strategy. As a city, we plan to continue to encourage and support digital innovation which strengthens businesses and investment.”

Kieran Charleson, BT regional director for the North of England, said: “Today’s launch in Manchester brings the fastest free public wi-fi in the UK to the North West. Residents and visitors alike are set to benefit from this new services, where they can make calls for free, access local information and even charge their phone when out and about.”

Matt Bird, general manager for InLinkUK, added: “Our network is currently in a period of rapid growth and we’re excited that Manchester has joined us on this journey to creating smart communities, supporting their digital innovation ambitions. With Manchester being such a core hub for workers, tourists and residents alike, the range of free digital services provided by the InLinks is a great asset.”

Altrincham-based litigator, Kit Sorrell, has become the first lawyer in the North West to be inducted into the Legal 500 Hall of Fame for professional negligence work.

Kit, who is a partner at FS Legal, has been recognised for being at the pinnacle of the legal profession for eight of the last ten years and has also been awarded Hall of Fame status for commercial litigation. These awards are the Legal 500’s highest accolade.

For over thirty years, Kit has routinely been instructed to represent high-profile individuals and corporations on complex, multi-million-pound claims against negligent professional advice.

Kit’s Hall of Fame accreditation for commercial litigation makes him one of only seven lawyers in the North West of England to receive this honour.

The Legal 500’s Hall of Fame celebrates the top 4% of lawyers across the UK who have received constant praise by their clients and peers for continued excellence.

Kit said: “I am honoured to be recognised in such a prestigious ranking and to be among some exceptional legal company.

“To be the only lawyer to enter the Hall of Fame in the North West for professional negligence is testament to the high standard of work that FS Legal continually produces.”

Kit garners praise from the Legal 500 for his ‘personal attention to clients and for ensuring that he gets a good result for his clients’ as well as his ‘gravitas, tough negotiation skills and dogged determination’.

“Over the last thirty years, I’ve enjoyed working for a range of clients, both high net worth individuals and corporate entities, on complex commerical and professional negligence matters – in the last year alone FS Legal has recovered several seven figure awards for its clients.”

Greater Manchester is to become the first region in the UK to use new data science to comprehensively map its technology sector.

MIDAS, Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency, has commissioned The Data City to benchmark the region’s emerging technology capabilities against other areas in the UK.

It will highlight Greater Manchester’s strengths and assets, using data-based evidence to attract potential investment and new businesses.

The Data City is a Data Science & Software Company
which uses a combination of open data, licensed data, data from the web, and artificial intelligence (AI) to create real-time accurate insights into economic questions. Its team has created a unique set of tools that provide always-up-to-date analysis to inform investment and growth decisions and accelerate innovation in the UK.

The new company launched this month (September 2018) having grown out of a longstanding partnership between ODILeeds and Bloom Media. The two companies have together built a groundbreaking technology platform capable of using open data and innovative web analysis to find out where businesses operate, what sectors they work in, and the technologies they are using.

Rather than having to manually curate lists of businesses based on broad-spectrum information such as SIC codes, The Data City’s platform uses a sector mapping tool, capable of assimilating detailed information from company websites and analysing their language to understand exactly what they do. This allows them to identify disruptive technology trends and then find businesses associated with them.

Thanks to the speed and accuracy of the process, The Data City can draw upon information from the 4.2 million active businesses in the UK, over 100,000 technology and innovation events, and nearly 200 million scientific papers and patents to constantly update a platform showing business developments and innovation trends in real time.

Once the region’s technology sector has been comprehensively mapped, The Data City will build upon the results by identify companies most able to benefit from Greater Manchester’s unique strengths. At the end of the six-month project, a number of events will be held to showcase the findings, and publicise Greater Manchester’s offer.

Paul Connell, co-founder of The Data City, said: “The Data City uses a unique platform which processes and analyses data quickly and accurately, and which can provide definitive economic insights, based on information found on the web and through open data channels.

“We believe we can drive economic growth in the UK by providing data-based evidence for decisions which can help businesses expand, accurately identify priority areas for investment and inform economic policy.

“As well as allowing us to draw on a much wider range of information, our unique process applies sophisticated analyses based on keyword criteria and removes the expensive and time consuming data collection stage.

“It speeds up report generation and allows us to share not only the immediate conclusions but also constantly updated and openly published data.  This can be freely accessed and used to make and evaluate decisions on an ongoing basis, and we also offer an optional consultancy service to help interpret findings.”

Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: “Greater Manchester is the UK’s leading digital city-region and an emerging player on the world stage. This is no accident – through our crowdsourced digital strategy we’re supporting businesses to innovate and thrive which makes us attractive to both start-ups and global companies.

“We have the infrastructure, secure digital environments, and the talent pipeline to make things happen. This puts us in the perfect position to trial new technologies: we’re agile enough to get up and running quickly, but large enough to test at scale before rolling out pilots UK-wide.

“Through this visual mapping project, Greater Manchester will be able to showcase our success in the digital sector, setting ambitious benchmarks to measure up against, and using accurate data to encourage further investment into the region.”

Tim Newns, CEO of MIDAS, said: “Greater Manchester is already established as a leading UK tech region, with a host of cutting edge technology firms located in the area, and a strong performance across all areas from the Internet of Things (IoT) to virtual reality and Artificial Intelligence (AI).  It is also home to leading research institutions and universities.

“By fully understanding and harnessing our technology sector we can become one of the best places in the world for developing these capabilities to generate growth, attract investment and invite world class businesses to locate here.
“We are looking forward to seeing the results from The Data City’s research and will be making its findings open and accessible to showcase our strengths in emerging technology and establish the region at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution.”

Law firm Irwin Mitchell has announced that it is to become the main UK member of First Law International (FLI).

Established in 2001, FLI is based in Brussels and is a global network of over 80 independent national law firms, representing over 14,000 lawyers.

Irwin Mitchell has joined the network as part of its international growth strategy which involves establishing and consolidating a network of closely aligned law firms across the globe. Joining FLI will facilitate inward introduction of English legal work to Irwin Mitchell and it will also ensure it has a credible source of high quality law firms in most jurisdictions to which it can introduce clients requiring legal support outside the UK.

As part of the relationship, Irwin Mitchell Corporate partner and Head of International, Bryan Bletso, together with IP and Media partner Georgie Collins, will join a FLI delegation to the ACC Annual Conference in Austin, Texas on the 21 October 2018. The convention is the largest gathering of international General Counsels in the world. In addition, FLI will also unveil its newest IT innovations that will provide clients with a smoother and faster experience in dealing with multi-jurisdictional projects online from their mobile devices.

Victoria Brackett, Chief Executive of Irwin Mitchell’s Business Legal Services division, said: “We have been hugely impressed with FLI and I am confident the organisation will play a big role in helping us meet our international growth aspirations.  This is a key area for the firm and we are extremely excited to be joining one of the world’s most credible networks.

“FLI will not only help increase the amount of incoming work we generate from overseas, it will also offer a wide spread of jurisdictional coverage with firms of a size capable of supporting most queries that our client base could require.”

The chairman of property management and surveying group Scanlans is celebrating a 40-year career milestone.

Ian Stanistreet considered becoming a journalist or lawyer after leaving high school in 1978 but got a job as a trainee surveyor with Manchester city centre practice Frank Westbrook on £25 a week.

At the time, the practice was owned by Frank’s son Neil, a former Lord Mayor of Manchester who was later knighted.

Ian, 58, qualified in 1987 and shortly afterwards acquired the firm when Neil retired, becoming the sole principal.

He merged it with Scanlans in 1989 and became a partner. He was appointed chairman of Scanlans in October 2016.

Scanlans is a national practice with seven partners and 64 staff across offices in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and London.

It has a residential block division, a facilities management arm and a surveying consultancy which focuses on commercial and residential property valuations, building surveying, LPA receiverships, expert witness advice, rating and leasehold enfranchisement.

Scanlans also has a 50 per cent share in Pad Residential, a sales, lettings and management agency based in Manchester city centre.

In its most recent full financial year, Scanlans increased turnover by 16 per cent to £4.4m, with growth across all of its operations.

Ian said: “When I began at Frank Westbrook, I was thrown in at the deep end. The firm was mainly involved in the management of properties owned by the Westbrook family and I was the first point of contact for tenants who needed repairs.

“I was also involved in the management of a large property portfolio in the Northern Quarter in Manchester, most of which was occupied by clothing wholesalers.”

He added: “I’ve never thought about leaving Scanlans and even at the age of 58 I am not thinking about retirement. My roles have always been interesting and rewarding, and these are exciting times for the firm.”

Alongside becoming chairman, Ian said one of his proudest achievements has been increasing Scanlans’ residential block management business from a standing start to over £2m turnover.

“It is still growing, year-on year,” he added.

He said Sir Neil Westbrook has been his biggest career inspiration.

“Sir Neil was a no-nonsense businessman who didn’t suffer fools. He got things done and was highly-respected. Sadly, he passed away four years ago.”

Commenting on changes to the profession and the Manchester landscape, Ian said: “Regulation has increased over the years. While most of it is necessary, it has increased the burden on surveyors and property managers. We are all much more accountable.

“Manchester is unrecognisable from 1978, when the night-time economy barely existed.

“The IRA bombing of 1996 was a catalyst for regeneration and the city has gone from strength to strength.

“There are a number of exciting mixed-use and residential schemes currently under way that will improve the city centre even further and push its boundaries into areas that have been neglected for years. This will bring much-needed housing and facilities for families within easy reach of the city centre.”