The CTF is a tax free savings and investment account designed to ensure that all children born from 1 September 2002 will be entitled to a fund when they reach age 18. The government issued the vouchers for children born from 1 September 2002 to April 2005 in batches and compensated them for the fact that the vouchers were issued late. However, it appears that many parents have failed to open an account within the one year time limit allowed and HM Revenue & Customs have issued revised guidance to Child Trust Fund providers giving an extra 7 days after expiry for the parent to get the voucher to a provider.

Where parents have lost the voucher or fail to open an account the government will open a basic stakeholder account for the child. The parent will then have the opportunity to change the account in the future.

One of the main advantages of the CTF accounts is that parents and other individuals can add up to £1,200 additional capital to the account each year and this is also allowed to grow tax free. The fund must pass to the child once they reach 18 and the government hopes that this money will be used towards funding higher education costs for the child.

If you have recently had a child and are wondering how to apply for the voucher in the first place then you will be glad to hear that there is no application form to complete. A voucher will be issued automatically when an application is made for Child Benefit.

A discussion note on the origins of footpaths, lanes and roads
This note was prepared for the ICE Civil Engineering Heritage and History Exchange.
The analysis applies predominantly to England.

KEY IDEAS

• Routes develop for practical reasons: it is quicker and easier to travel a clear path, than struggle through undergrowth, or confront landowners.
• Many ancient routes were not metalled or surfaced. In archaeological terms, these routes are extremely fragile, difficult to detect and easy to destroy through ploughing.
• Routes are preserved by: Continuous use, Property boundaries, these can last literally thousands of years, The existence of a legal right of way
• Lost routes may be detected through - field boundaries, or hedges, crop marks, or depressions in the soil, archaeological survey and investigation
• Much can be inferred from the history of the adjoining land and what lies at either end of the route. A study of local settlement patterns and agriculture, industry and trade; together with social systems, local governance, tax raising, inheritance traditions and so on, can help explain what the route was used for, by what sort of traffic, and with what intensity.
• It is impossible to produce a universal guide on the routes and the landscape, as there have been important local variations brought about by population movements, cultural and technological change, on top of the differences in local climate and geology.
• Britain was extensively farmed from pre-history, with the population widely spread, and not merely confined to upland areas as has been commonly thought. As with archaeological evidence for routes, the evidence left by turf and wood buildings is extremely fragile and easy to miss. The Domesday survey suggests that wood covered between 9 and 20 percent of the country’s area, the rest being largely farmland. It is hardly likely that the area of
• The British population is thought to have peaked in 300 AD at possibly 4 million: 1300 AD at around 6 million; collapsing to 2-3 million by 1400, and not recovering until the 1600s. At each stage it is likely that the majority of the countryside was in general agricultural use. And it may be assumed that an extensive network of routes had developed in parallel.
• Why do routes wind? Traditional explanations were that the route twisted to avoid obstructions, such as fallen trees, mires etc, and it is true that there was a right to diverge from the way. However an alternative view is that as early communities became more productive and sophisticated, routes developed in a countryside that had already been carved up into fields, possibly set out in the bronze or the iron age.

It may not be unreasonable to say that a route may be presumed to be pre-Roman unless proven otherwise.

Landscape patterns

• Bronze age – (on Dartmoor) the landscape is divided by long parallel walls or reaves, into long strips, each strip subdivided by smaller walls.
• Iron age small rectangular fields 1-2 acres, also strip lynchets or terraces which enable ploughing on steep slopes.
• Roman rectilinear fields, villa based system.
• Saxon open field systems– very large fields of several hundred acres adjoining villages, cultivated as ridge and furrow.
• Post 1400 – following the collapse of the population there was a progressive change in agriculture to a small field pastoral system with fields of around 10 acres emerging.
• Parliamentary Enclosure – mainly 1750- 1850, discernible by smaller straight edged fields of approximately 10 acre, with relatively few hedge species. Principally occurring in a band between Dorset and Yorkshire.

Further changes

• Railway Age – development of towns along railway lines, role of the countryside in supplying food for expanding towns and cities. Arrival of mechanical ploughing towards end of 19th century.
• Tractor Age – clearance of hedges and the creation of larger fields suitable for mechanized vehicles, mechanical shovels enable drainage, artificial fertilisers increase yields.
• Car age – mass availability of cars results in rural buildings becoming viable as a base for urban life. Farm buildings detached from their farms, adjoining land turned into gardens. Replacement of hedgerows with close-boarded 6ft fences. New housing based on car use begins to appear. International trade in perishable food develops, eliminating the seasonal food.

HM Revenue & Customs have made available on their website an employment status indicator (ESI) tool which allows contractors to check HM Revenue & Customs’ interpretation of the employment status of potential workers. The tool is aimed at those contractors within the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) and is being made available in advance of the start to the new scheme, which has been pushed back to 6 April 2007.

WARNING!

Those of you who decide to use the tool should do so with extreme care as it asks a series of leading questions which are used to form the basis for a conclusion of employed, self employed or unsure.

Where the tool is unable to come up with a conclusion then it suggests you refer the particular circumstances to an HM Revenue & Customs Status Inspector which could have all sorts of unexpected consequences, including a visit from HM Revenue & Customs. HM Revenue & Customs warn that the tool cannot be used to produce a binding ruling as to the status of a particular individual.

My experiences in the Army uncovered some interesting ideas about outstanding leadership, and why people would say, “I would follow that man anywhere into any danger”. In this article we will look at some coaching techniques that you can use to motivate your team to be more productive on every level. Coaching has exploded over the last decade or so and now is a widely accepted method of assisting in the reaching of peak performance. The skills required to be an effective coach are essential for any manager to learn in order to have a happy and successful team. Let’s highlight the difference between a coach and a traditional manager. A manager talks; a coach actively listens. A manager gives orders; a coach encourages the individual to meet challenges. A manager reaches corporate goals by working on people; a coach works with people. Understand the difference?

Steps to being an effective coach

1. Motivate your people - You can do this by allowing them to do their job. Give them the tools required to be successful and then get out of their way!
2. Match the most appropriate person to the task at hand.
3. Focus on the process as well as the end result.
4. Ask for their opinions - “How do you think you should handle it” may be one of the most important questions you ask an employee.
5. Admit your mistakes, fix them and learn from them - You are human too and those that you work with know that.
6. Operate an open door policy - Having said that, you will need not to be disturbed whilst you think, plan, strategise and get stuff done. When your door is open and a staff member pops in, make sure you are “in the moment”. That is, actively listen to what is being said to you. Ask follow up questions to ensure that you fully understand what is being said to you. More importantly though manage by walking around. Let your people see that you are accessible – encourage their work efforts and stop for a chat. Remember to focus on the moment.
7. Be an excellent listener - Do you know the difference between hearing; listening and actively listening? Actively listening is when you focus on what is being said to you. Other thoughts are pushed from your mind and you are listening and watching. Active listeners don’t ignore emotions either. Remember that God gave you 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason!
8. Ask quality questions - Coaches know the power of when to use open ended or closed questions. Be clear and concise in your communication and leave emotion out.

Coaching encourages one on one interaction. For the communication to be effective, you will need to have a clear purpose. If your employee initiates the conversation then let him or her set the agenda. If the conversation is initiated by you then be clear about what you seek to accomplish in the time allocated. Establish the ground rules – will the conversation take 10 minutes or and hour? Are you speaking as a manager or as a “friend”?

NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) highlights the importance of language. People hear using all of their senses. Is the person you are communicating with a visual (can you see what I am saying?) or audio (can you hear where I am coming from?) or feeling (how do you feel about what I am saying?) By communicating in a way that the other person feels comfortable with you will have congruence and a quick result.

How you say something can sometimes be more important than what you say. Avoid inflated verbs like “always” and “never” – these words increase the emotion in any statement. E.g. “You are always late to meetings” or “You never turn up on time to work” are probably overstatements; eliciting an aggressive or confrontational response.

Another important skill for an effective coach is to celebrate the differences between your people. I have worked under many types of leader in my time that have approached leadership from the perspective of “it’s my way or the highway”. This is an outdated management technique (even in the British Army). Coaching encourages the setting of clear goals and coaching for results – not controlling activities to get the results. In fact the better leader/coach you are, the less control you need over your workers.

Coaches empower others to achieve their potential. Your job is to provide knowledge, information, but most of all trust. Focus on solving problems together. The most constructive way to do this is to present the problem in a clear concise manner, then create as many possibilities for solutions as your team can, without focussing on a single solution. Separate the personality from the solution resisting the temptation to assign the person who came up with the suggestion the task of carrying it out.

If you are ever in the position of having to deliver bad news, make sure you do it personally. Most of us want others to like us and we certainly aren’t very likeable when we are delivering bad news. By taking the coach approach, you can deliver bad news without emotion but with empathy. Offer reasons for the decision and avoid taking the therapists approach – remember that you are coaching performance NOT personality. If at all possible offer options for improvement but don’t end the session until the person is clear on what your expectations are and what must be done next to rectify the situation.

Finally, effective coaches will always stress the positive and provide positive feedback regularly both individually and within the group. We all respond well to praise. Go into bat for them with your superiors. Remember that as their coach, you are a vital link. Savour their achievements without taking any of the credit away from them. Being a coach is sometimes a thankless job, however you will be rewarded with their peak performance and longevity and loyalty to the role.

Finally, stay focused – utilise the skills of actively listening.