This week's North East appointments

Newcastle PR agency OPR has welcomed two new faces to its team as it continues to see growth across its regional, national and international client base.

New PR account executives Lauren Hedley, 24, from Durham and Amy Jackson, 23, from Newcastle have joined the company, which is the current CIPR North East Outstanding Agency.

Lauren was offered the new role in August after completing a six-month placement at the Ouseburn creative agency and graduating with first class honours in Marketing BSc from Newcastle University.

Amy also joined the team in August after previous employment with two other regional PR agencies where she worked on several clients including Ross’s Pickles and the Festival of the North East event last year. Previously Amy graduated from Northumbria University with a 2:1 in English literature and journalism.

Brian Rudkin has joined PwC’s Newcastle office to specialise in employment.

He will lead the employment solutions practice, working with the firm’s 80-strong tax team in Newcastle. The firm has one of the largest tax teams in the North with 400 specialists across the firm’s six offices, covering a wide range of services including human resource services, VAT, direct and corporate tax.

Richard Podd, tax director at PwC in Newcastle said: “Brian’s appointment represents our strategy of attracting the best talent so we can continue to service our clients, helping them to grow and achieve their objectives.

“His extensive experience of working within the construction, public sector, automotive and financial services sectors will complement our existing tax services. And his knowledge and understanding of auto-enrolment will also be vital to support many of our clients through what can be a complex process, particularly as the compliance deadlines for smaller companies are fast approaching.”

Begbies Traynor in Newcastle has expanded with the appointment of Shaun Hudson as an insolvency administrator.

Shaun, 22, who lives in Houghton-le-Spring, has joined the firm following a work placement resulting from Begbies Traynor’s on going partnership with Northumbria University.

For the past three years, the firm has offered law students from the university the opportunity to apply to undertake month-long work experience within its corporate recovery team.

A North East energy efficiency company has strengthened its team with the appointment of an operations manager.

Joshua Gebhard, from Blyth, will be responsible for overseeing the production of the Radfan, a revolutionary fan unit created by North Tyneside entrepreneurs Roland Glancy and Simon Barker.

Along with designing, setting up and managing the Radfan production facility at North Shields, Joshua, a former purchase and customer service manager, will manage a team of assembly staff, improve quality control and monitor stock levels.

Gateshead-based Route Monkey has added Robin Haycock to its board as non-executive director.

Robin’s appointment is designed to target further growth in the electric and ultra-low carbon vehicle sector as he will support the creation of software to enable business opportunities for fleets, infrastructure providers and energy firms wishing to use electric vehicles or supply services to this market.

Colin Ferguson, CEO of Route Monkey, said: “We have enjoyed some considerable early success with EVOS which delivers proven benefits for both planning EV fleet integration and recharging infrastructure. Robin’s expertise in both of these areas will undoubtedly enable us to help further accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.”