Cattles this morning revealed it will close 18 branches of Welcome Financial Services, its personal loans business. The Batley-based company said that approximately 155 employees would receive notice that they were at risk of redundancy. Cattles told the Stock Exchange the move was “part of its ongoing drive to adjust the cost base of the business to the reducing size of its loan book”. The news follows Cattles’ decision to close 70 Welcome Financial Services branches in February, together with 450 jobs, and its restructuring of Shopacheck in March.

Waste management company Augean has reported pre-tax profits of £1.3m for the year to 31 December 2009, down from £4m in the previous year. Non-executive chairman David Williams described the year as one of “mixed fortunes” for the Wetherby-based business, which also reported decreased revenue for the year of £28.1m, down from £36.3m in 2008.

Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce has launched a programme of events designed to “develop and network the business leaders of tomorrow”. Aimed at members of the business and professional community who aspire to director/partner positions in the next five years, the events will feature some of Yorkshire’s leading business figures and present networking opportunities. The first event will take place on 26 May at O2’s Arlington site, with Toby Foggo, O2’s head of development, speaking.

Live interactive online coverage enabled a remote audience of more than 50,000 to participate in the 44th International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Conference and Exhibition held at the Harrogate International Centre (HIC) in April. The four-day conference attracted approximately 2,000 physical delegates for its programme of more than 450 presentations and workshops, of which 50 video sessions were made available to an online audience. Kevin McHugh, event planning manager at HIC, said: “This is all made possible by harnessing the power of online video and combining that with powerful interaction models together with social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.”

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The winners of the Variety Club’s Yorkshire Property Awards were unveiled last night at a ceremony held at Rudding Park Hotel, Harrogate. Caddick Developments’ managing director John Bywater scooped the Property Personality of the Year award, with MEPC, Southdale and Bowman Riley Architects also among the winners. For a complete list of the award winners, click here.

This month, Henrie Westlake, partner at the Leeds office of Knight Frank, has been in our Ask the Expert hotseat, answering your questions about commercial property. “There are currently a huge number of factors influencing the property market and as such it is very difficult to identify the impact of a measure such as the Stamp Duty Exemption in isolation,” he says. To read more from Henrie, click here.