On the move: the latest East Midlands hires
Nottingham Law School’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC) has recruited a solicitor from Gateley.
Ashley Fredericks joins the LAC as a supervising solicitor for the Business and Enterprise Law Service and will support local businesses and other institutions to access legal advice which normally would be out of their reach.
He will also help develop the LAC’s pro-bono offering and use that to help train the Law School’s Student Advisers.
Fredericks said: “The Nottingham Law School’s Legal Advice Centre is the first fully regulated law firm attached to a university in the UK. This innovative model allows the Legal Advice Centre to deliver free or low cost legal advice to clients by giving students the opportunity to take part in the delivery of that advice. The Business and Enterprise Law Service aims to support businesses, entrepreneurs and charities which simply cannot afford to pay for legal advice at the rates set by more standard private practice law firms. In this way, the Legal Advice Centre makes a valuable contribution to meet a previously un-met need of our East Midlands business community.
“In this new role, I look forward to helping businesses survive, develop and grow. I also look forward to assisting with the training of the region’s future lawyers and to deploying my skills within the wider pro-bono offering that the Legal Advice Centre makes available for the under-represented in Nottingham.”
Centre director, Nick Johnson, said: “We are delighted to welcome Ashley to the team and know that he will make an invaluable contribution to developing our services to small businesses.”
John Sankey and Nikki Rolls
Nikki Rolls has been appointed as the new chief executive of the Mansfield Business Improvement District (BID).
Rolls has worked on the regeneration of a number of strategic town centres within Walsall, setting up a number of town centre partnerships, and has secured investment in the continued development of strategies that result in the reduction in the number of vacant units.
She said: “The BID in Mansfield has been an extremely proactive organisation in the town centre, working with partners such as the local authorities and the businesses on a number of initiatives that have really made a difference.
“In fact, I have never come across a BID that does as much as Mansfield does for its levy payers. One of my first aims is to get the BID officially accredited for what it does. I am confident that this can happen and that the BID will become one of just 30 out of 205 across the UK to have this recognition.
She added: “My key role is to take the BID forward, using the foundation it has already built. I will be working on a strategic vision for the town centre, in particular the public realm areas (community spaces), attracting more national inward investment and the potential regeneration sites.”
Mansfield BID chairman John Sankey said: “Nikki has a wealth of experience in working in town centre regeneration and promotion, and has a track record of getting results. She’s a logical thinker with a can do attitude, and that’s exactly what we need in Mansfield.”
