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The scale of current demand on primary care services from people seeking help with common mental health problems places enormous pressure on the existing front line workers in general practice. The paucity of training opportunities and competing pressures to deliver improved services across a range of general practice targets remains a major challenge for primary care professionals. The impact of government policy, to improve both access to and choice of treatments, has raised public expectations.The commissioning of the graduate workforce, the graduate worker in primary care mental health (GWPCMH), commenced in 2002, in response to the publication of target numbers detailed in the Priorities and Planning Framework, (DoH, 2002). It signalled a determination to expand the workforce provision and improve the quality of care for service users with common mental health problems.This paper examines the scale of common mental health problems, the policy response and the commissioning process. Particular attention is given to examining the barriers that have been shown to affect implementation, identifying the key influencers and the resources required to train these workers.

Support, time and recovery (STR) workers are in the vanguard of the new frontline, non‐professionally affiliated groups identified in the NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2000).Since 2003, the former changing workforce programme mental health team (now part of NIMHE's national workforce programme) have facilitated the implementation of this role across England, initially through a pilot project, then an accelerated development programme (ADP). It is this latter, ongoing, programme that forms the basis of this article. The authors refer to the challenge of establishing the STR worker role in a variety of statutory, non‐statutory and independent service settings and achieving the Department of Health (DH) target of 3000 STR workers in post by December 2006. The collaborative implementation process is discussed and many issues such as performance management, measures, service user involvement, organisational (including human resources and occupational health) support, and education and training, are explored. Key learning from the process is identified, and consideration given to the future application of such a simple yet effective model for change.

This analytical article points to the lack of retail business experience and knowledge which characterises many of the small shopkeepers across this country. It also makes clear how far the small independent retailer feels hounded by government and competition and suggests that help may be in order. Also contained here are the results of a pilot survey of prospective purchasers and vendors of small retail units and the article points to the need for further research into the birth and death of small retail businesses.

As Britain's shopping provision becomes increasingly centralised, the small local shop is becoming a rare feature of the retail grocery trade. Dr David A. Kirby examines the results of a pilot survey to discover the attitudes and opinions of failed retailers. He goes on to suggest that there is a real need for efficient and convenient local stores which may require special concessions from the Government, and certainly an injection of entrepreneurial talent, to survive.

There is certainly an awareness in this country of the need for training in the retail sector. However, this is directed principally at the needs of the larger retailer (cf the articles on training in our May/June issue). David Kirby suggests that little attention is being given to the training needs of the small independent. In this article he outlines a training and advisory programme for village shopkeepers which took place in mid‐Wales, a programme funded in part by the EEC in response to the decline of the village shop in that area.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to the design of an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to aid with the internal inspection and classification of tall or large structures. Focusing mainly on the challenge of robustly determining the position and velocity of the UAV, in three dimensional space, using on‐board Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). Although capable of autonomous flight, the UAV is primarily intended for semi‐autonomous operation, where the operator instructs the UAV where to go. However, if communications with the ground station are lost, it can backtrack along its path until communications are re‐established.

A UAV has been designed and built using primarily commercial‐off‐the‐shelf components. Software has been developed to allow the UAV to operate autonomously, using solely the on‐board computer and sensors. It is currently undergoing extensive flight tests to determine the performance and limitations of the system as a whole.

Initial test flights have proven the presented approach and resulting real‐time SLAM algorithms to function robustly in a range of large internals. The paper also briefly discusses the approach used by similar projects and the challenges faced.

The proposed novel algorithms allow for on‐board, real‐time, three‐dimensional SLAM in unknown and unstructured environments on a computationally constrained UAV.

Despite, or perhaps even because of, the economic uncertainties of the period, the 1970s witnessed a radical transformation of the British distributive system. Most of the changes which occurred were similar to those experienced elsewhere in the Western world, and in a review of developments in EEC countries, Dawson has suggested that the impact of these changes on society could be similar to that produced by the Industrial Revolution. In Britain at least, the changes in distribution were, and remain, a result of very marked changes in society: most notably the change in consumption patterns brought about by endemic inflation, increasing unemployment and periodic world energy crises. The result has been increased competition, a search for greater efficiency and diversification of traditional product lines. Thus the British distribution system throughout the 1970s was dominated by the trend to mass merchandising, by the emergence of large firms and a consequent increase of corporate power and by the appearance of new distribution forms. While many of the conditions and developments experienced in the 1970s are expected to continue into the 1980s, it has been predicted (Distributive Industry Training Board 1980) that by the 1990s further revolutionary changes are likely to have occurred, particularly as a result of widespread automation involving new technology. The industry is, therefore, in the middle of a period of very rapid change.

Clinical data capture and transfer are becoming more important as hospital practices change. Medical record pro‐formas are widely used but their efficacy in acute settings is unclear. This paper aims to assess whether pro‐forma and aide‐memoire recording aids influence data collection in acute medical and surgical admission records completed by junior doctors.

During October 2007 to January 2008, 150 medical and 150 surgical admission records were randomly selected. Each was analysed using Royal College of Physicians guidelines. Surgical record deficiencies were highlighted in an aide‐memoire printed on all A4 admission sheets. One year later, the exercise was repeated for 199 admissions.

Initial assessment demonstrated similar data capture rates, 77.4 per cent and 75.9 per cent for medicine and surgery respectively (Z=‐0.74, p=0.458). Following the aide‐memoire's introduction, surgical information recording improved relatively, 70.5 per cent and 73.9 per cent respectively (Z=2.01, p=0.045). One from 11 aide‐memoire categories was associated with improvement following clinical training. There was an overall fall in admission record quality during 2008‐9 vs 2007‐8.

The study compared performance among two groups of doctors working simultaneously in separate wards, representing four months' activity.

Hospital managers and clinicians should be mindful that innovations successful in elective clinical practice might not be transferable to an acute setting.

This audit shows that in an acute setting, over one‐quarter of clinical admission data were not captured and devices aimed at improving data capture had no demonstrable effect. The authors suggest that in current hospital practice, focussed clinical training is more likely to improve patient admission records than employing recording aids.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England’s national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing.

In total, 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focussed on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data were coded using the qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti.

Academics’ ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics’ writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups.

This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals’ academic writing practices in particular are shaped by such systems.