The need for extra free time is also on the public’s minds with two thirds aspiring for additional time and money to go travelling. 20 per cent wish they could spend more time with their family, 13 per cent dream of setting up their own business and 15 per cent would like to build their own home.

At a time when belts are tight, most UK residents cannot afford to simply move to a bigger home. However, increasing the space in your life may be easier than you think. Most people have a room in their home, which is filled with things they do not use on a daily basis. If they move these items into a self storage facility, a new bedroom, study or a place to relax could be revealed. Self storage is very cost effective, especially when compared to the costs involved with upsizing your home. Rather than looking to expand the size of your home, declutter your existing space.

The local Salvation Army church and community centre offers a range of activities and services within the local community. Local residents can become involved through volunteering with fundraising initiatives, attending church services and helping with local activities. The Salvation Army also supports the work of the local emergency services by providing refreshments, shelter and counselling at major incidents.

Majors Ian & Christine Kennedy are the corps officers of Farnworth Salvation Army; Ian says: ‘ready steady store in Worsley has been absolutely fabulous looking after The Salvation Army’s local interests with care and professionalism, and by offering both help and advice. The facilities are superb; clean, fresh and very well organised. The manager, Jamie and the staff are to be commended.’

The work carried out by Farnworth Salvation Army is invaluable to the local community and is something we fully support at ready steady store. It has been very rewarding working with the organisation and we look forward to developing our relationship by supporting the charity at future events.

The Salvation Army is one of the largest, most diverse providers of social services in the UK after the Government. Founded in East London in 1865, it is now working in 118 countries worldwide. There are over 1.6million members, with programmes including homeless centres, drug rehabilitation centres, schools, hospitals and medical centres as well as nearly 16,000 church and community centres. The work of The Salvation Army is funded through donations from its members, the general public and, where appropriate, local authority and government grants.

The players currently compete in tournaments in the Yorkshire area, both individually and in teams. The squad has recently added extra tournament training sessions to its training regime, in an attempt to achieve its goals for 2010. Some of the players’ recent achievements include Charlie Johnson snatching first place at the Ilkley Christmas U14 boys match play and Lucy Stead topping the leader board at the U12 Girls in Hull at Christmas.

This year there has already been two triumphs for the squad. Jacob Dunworth won the U12 boys at Graves Tennis Centre in February and Emily Gibson took first place at the U14 tournament in Graves, Sheffield on 14 February 2010.

Dawn Wong, junior chairman, says:  ‘It is refreshing to be supported by a local business that is looking to work with the Leeds community. The new t-shirts are a great way to kick off the upcoming season. It is a very exciting time for our junior section; we are striving for the highest standards with a host of new initiatives and hope our top class facilities will assist the squads in fulfilling their potential. The club, coaches and squads would like to thank ready steady store for all its support’.

We are pleased to support Chapel Allerton Lawn Tennis & Squash Club, by donating new t-shirts for its performance junior tennis and squash squads. All of us at ready steady store wish the squads all the best for the remainder of the season. As a company, we actively support local sports initiatives within the Leeds community.

Support our Soldiers was set up six years ago to send parcels out to British Troops fighting in Iraq. The group received official charity status in 2007 and has expanded to cover military personnel serving in Afghanistan. SOS also provides counselling to relatives, which is run exclusively by volunteers.

SOS is often overwhelmed by the numbers who volunteer to support the servicemen and women in the war zones and to this end get involved in its shoebox collection. The boxes are filled with morale boosting items, from sweets and snacks to toiletries and essentials, bringing forward memories of home.  SOS sent out almost 12,000 parcels to British Armed Forces serving overseas last Christmas and hope to continue these efforts throughout the year.

Sharron Thomas from Support our Soldiers, says: ‘ready steady store in Worsley has been tremendous, looking after Support our Soldiers local interests with care and professionalism, and by offering both help and advice. The facilities are superb; clean, fresh and very well organised and the staff are to be commended.’

The work carried out by Support our Soldiers is invaluable to the local community and is something we fully support at ready steady store. It has been very rewarding working with the organisation and we look forward to developing our relationship by supporting the charity at future events.

Anybody wishing to help can contact Sharron at sharron@supportoursoldiers.co.uk for further information. Those wishing to donate do not have to commit to filling a whole shoebox – any items from the suggested list provided by SOS are greatly appreciated.

Doncaster Deaf Trust’s mission is to develop high quality, innovative and collaborative provision in a financially efficient environment, which empowers deaf pupils to live a productive and independent life.

People changed their holidaying habits this year, with almost 30 per cent stating that they took fewer holidays in general. Around 20 per cent indicated they saved for one long trip, while a further 20 per cent prefer shorter breaks and less long holidays.

Despite the recession, families understand the importance of taking their holidays. They are simply changing the way they take a break. Many holidaymakers get excited at the prospect of staying closer to home, preferring to explore the delights on their doorstep, which is great news for the local economy.

Firms believe that redesigning and packaging their businesses in a different way has been a critical survival strategy to tackle the recession.

However, just under 50 per cent of businesses have cut back on staff – including redundancies, wage and bonus cuts, recruitment freezes and unpaid leave – to save money. In addition, marketing seems to have taken a blow with 15 per cent reducing yearly spend. A massive 70 per cent have also cut back on staff incentives to stay with the company.

The study shows how determined some companies are to beat the recession come what may.  Taking positive steps to evolve their business strategies, combined with implementing cost-cutting measures, are pivotal to their survival and success.

However, two thirds of companies are not changing any aspect of their business offering and a third has no recession strategy in place, which we find quite surprising.

Typically business owners can save tens of thousands of pounds every year by relocating the contents of their commercial warehouse or office storage space to a self storage facility, reducing rental costs by up to 90 per cent.

As with many new ideas that originate in the USA, self-storage was exported to the UK around 10 years later and so it was with self-storage. During the early 1980’s, a few low grade facilities started to appear in and around London in poor quality buildings, mainly situated at the rear of industrial estates. Some stores appeared on main roads following the property crash on the early 1990’s but these were opportunity led and few and far between.

All those companies that start with the letter A

The early UK self-storage operators mainly had names that began with A, such as ABC, Acorn, Abacus, A1, Apex and Aardvaark as they competed to be at the top of the self-storage section in the Yellow Pages which was the primary means of marketing self-storage throughout the 1980’s and into the 1990’s.

The new wave for a new millennium

The UK self-storage world changed in 1998 when Shurgard Self-Storage arrived from the USA and the Big Yellow Self-Storage Company was formed in the UK. Both focused on the Greater London area initially. This new wave of development brought modern, multi storey self-storage buildings with 24 hour access pin codes and a sense of customer service.

Other new names appeared such as Safestore and Access self-storage but these substantially started out as a consolidation of existing 1st generation stores; for instance, Acorn and Abacus were knocked together to form Access and Safestore acquired Aardvaark, Spaces and other smaller companies.

Both Shurgard and Big Yellow built their business cases around the visibility of the building to generate enquiries and the prospect for enquiries from Yellow Pages. As we all now all know, the growth of the internet has been phenomenal over the past 10 years and is now largely replacing Yellow Pages.

The coming of ReadySteady Store

Ready Steady Store was formed in 2005. The business model was to take the type of building that Shurgard and Big Yellow were building in London and the Home Counties and take the concept to the provinces.

At Ready Steady Store, we had the benefit of lessons learnt by Shurgard and Big Yellow in their roll out programmes over a 10 year period. As was clear from the early American experience, the possibility of  “cut off” by a competitor from the target market remains a serious potential threat. In the first wave of development we therefore sought to find sites that were high profile, as close as possible to the target markets and ideally, in solo trading locations, thereby reducing the chances of being “cut off”.

The first hurdle for these self-storage pioneers was to find a building in which to carry through their ideas. Affordability of buildings was a significant first hurdle to overcome. The conundrum was that a self-storage entrepreneur without funds could not easily raise the finance to buy a building and fit it out. The alternative was to persuade an owner to grant a lease but again, this was not easy because the entrepreneur himself represented a significant risk; he had no money, no track record, sceptical potential investors because the idea hadn’t been tested and last, but not least, wary banks incredulous that any one person might want to rent a room in a large shed when garages, sheds or basements represented credible and cheaper short term solutions.

Well, the pioneers persisted. Some owners of large old multi-storey buildings and which were poorly located, sited or configured were beginning to face up to the fact that their buildings were beginning to represent a problem. The new technology industries wanted smart new buildings in park environments whereas these buildings were poorly sited and were decaying so potential repair costs represented a ticking time bomb. Alternative uses in a hostile urban environment were out of the question. The possibility of a deal with a self-storage operator therefore represented a new solution to an old problem.

1st generation stores

The typical 1st generation self-storage in the USA was therefore commonly to be found in an area of urban decay, in a cheap, decaying building located in an intimidating environment, often with a leaking roof and nowhere near a potential customer’s home or place of work, and hard to find. And yet, the customers started to come. The newly divorced and recently bereaved who needed time before clearing stuff out, the house mover; in fact, anybody trying to manage its space requirements.

The 1980’s – better quality and more convenient stores

It did not take long for the ever resourceful American entrepreneur to realise that, if the building could be sited closer to the potential customer in a less intimidating environment, there was a strong likelihood that the potential customer would not travel to find a solution. It was clear that the increasingly affluent, American consumer was interested in convenience and was willing to pay for it.

In this way, the 2nd generation stores in refurbished, better quality buildings in less hostile environments started to appear especially as funding became easier during the 1980’s.

Over time, the increasingly sophisticated consumer sought new purpose built storage centres and the size of the investment demanded better quality, high visibility locations which are the 3rd generation buildings.