Author: Rhys Gregory

A South Wales law firm has been recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ by Great Place to Work®, the global authority on workplace culture. Watkins & Gunn Solicitors, which has offices in Cardiff, Newport and Pontypool, were announced as one of the 2022 UK’s Best Workplaces™ at an awards ceremony in London. To determine the 2022 UK Best Workplaces™ list, Great Place to Work® perform rigorous evaluations of hundreds of employee survey responses alongside Culture Audit™ submissions from leaders at each company. The data is then used to benchmark the effectiveness of companies’ employee value propositions against the…

Award-winning charity City Hospice’s Forever Flowers campaign officially launched at the Senedd, home of the Welsh parliament, on April 25. Families and patients supported by the charity joined volunteers, campaign sponsors and politicians to celebrate the launch of Forever Flowers at the event sponsored by Jenny Rathbone MS. Palliative care patient Amy-Claire Davies, who has been under the care of City Hospice for nearly 8 years, was among the speakers at the event. Amy-Claire regularly documents her life living with an incurable degenerative disease and its daily symptoms of pain, nausea, seizures and fatigue as @the_incurable_optimist with her 36,000+ TikTok…

Insight HRC, business psychology and leadership consultancy, has been bought out by its senior management team, which has been in place for over a decade, Pip Gwynn, Jemma MacLean, Jessica Cooper and Laura Di Rienzo. Established more than 25 years ago, Insight HRC has grown under the stewardship of its founder John Lazarus and co-owner, Simon Wiltshire. The award-winning consultancy supplies leadership development, psychometric assessment, culture change and team development for some of the UK’s biggest companies and public sector organisations, including Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and Western Power. Insight HRC has a team of…

Christ College Brecon is launching its ambitious 2041 Mountain Challenge this May which will invite intrepid individuals to push themselves to their limits and take on one of three different hiking routes around the Brecon Beacons. The Challenge will then be held annually up until 2041 which will mark the school’s 500th anniversary, and will raise money year-on-year for the Christ College Brecon Foundation, which funds students’ bursaries, and Brecon Mountain Rescue. Sponsored by Sam Hawking Property Lawyers, the routes will be manned by the Brecon Mountain Rescue team, while Fabian4, a specialist mountain event company, will be providing individual…

Pioneering Welsh bar & restaurant group and Spanish food importer Ultracomida has expanded on its wine retail offering – with investment in a Cardiff ‘wine warehouse’ which will be open to both trade and the general public by summer 2022. The independent boutique operators are well known for bringing a casual dining style influenced by Northern Spain to Wales, through their award-winning wine shops, delis, and restaurants in Wales; Ultracomida in Narberth and Aberystwyth, and Curado Bar and Vermut in the Welsh capital. More recently, wine retail has become a major focus for the group, with more than 4,500 sq ft of warehousing space acquired in Aberystwyth…

To celebrate Deaf Awareness Week (2-8 May), Careers Wales has announced its free and impartial support will be accessible to the British Sign Language (BSL) community from Tuesday 3 May. Careers Wales has teamed up with SignVideo, the UK’s leading BSL video interpreting service, to better support the deaf and BSL community in accessing Careers Wales services. The service will initially be available Wales-wide through the Careers Wales Connect contact centre. It will later be available in-person at centres in Aberystwyth, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Llandudno, Newport, Newtown, Swansea and Wrexham. The final phase will be rolled out to all…

The histories and life of five port towns in Wales and Ireland will feature in a new film that will be premiered in Aberystwyth at the end of May. The series of eight short documentary films and one feature-length film, At the Water’s Edge: Stories of the Irish Sea, aim to promote the ports of Fishguard, Holyhead and Pembroke Dock in Wales, and Dublin and Rosslare in Ireland, as well as the three ferry routes connecting them. The films were produced as part of Ports, Past and Present, a project which explores the history and cultural heritage of the ports,…

Independent tea specialists Waterloo Tea have transformed a tiny, 7sqm former park ranger’s hut into a takeaway gelato & candyfloss cabin. Situated just metres from the first ever tearoom in the Waterloo portfolio, The Rangers Hut, based in Waterloo Gardens (the park which inspired the brand’s name), has been lovingly restored. By working with Cardiff council, Waterloo Tea has been able to fund the restoration, bringing a beautiful piece of history back to its best. The inspiration behind The Rangers Hut was to create the ultimate treat for kids and grown-ups visiting the park; freshly made candy floss, waffle boats and locally…

A college learner from Caerphilly has been crowned the UK’s top plumbing apprentice after winning a national competition. Twenty-year-old Ruben Duggan from Blackwood has beaten off stiff competition from across the UK to land himself the top prize at the grand finals of this year’s HIP Apprentice of the Year competition. The competition, run by HIP magazine aims to shine a light on the most talented young apprentices in the industry. Ruben, who is currently studying an NVQ Level 3 plumbing diploma at Coleg y Cymoedd’s Ystrad Mynach campus, came out on top after a tough two-day contest held at…

This July, Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod and Llangollen Fringe Festival join forces to celebrate two significant cultural milestones for the town; the Eisteddfod’s 75th anniversary, and the Fringe’s 25thwhich combine to make an amazing 100 years of summer festivals in Llangollen. To mark these two anniversaries, the Eisteddfod and Fringe are collaborating for the first time to produce Llanfest 2022 on Sunday 10th July, the final day of the four-day International Llangollen Eisteddfod music festival, which runs from 7-10th July. Llanfest has become a firm favourite in the summer festival diary and this year there will be an emphasis on home-grown talent incorporating eclectic music, theatre and…