Author: Rhys Gregory

Mazuma, the UK’s leading provider of online accounting services for small and micro businesses, today celebrates its 15th and most successful year in business having successfully supported its 2,000-plus clients through the throes of the pandemic.   Established in 2006 by childhood friends, Lucy Cohen and Sophie Hughes, Mazuma has been on a positive trajectory since its inception. With turnover up by 20 per cent year-on-year, the 30-people strong business is on course for achieving a record-high £3.6 million turnover in the current financial year. This has seen Mazuma continue to expand its team, with six new hires made since the start of the pandemic as well as introduce a new app designed to streamline the process…

When it comes to overtures of appreciation they don’t come much grander than this. Swansea-based Coach House Pianos has installed a baby grand piano in Morriston Hospital as a thank you to the NHS for its dedication and hard work throughout the pandemic. The piano, which has been emblazoned with a rainbow-coloured Thank You NHS, is being housed in the hospital’s education centre with the aim of helping staff relax and unwind during their breaks. And it doesn’t matter if anyone is unable to play the piano as it can play itself with a catalogue of classical and jazz music.…

At a virtual awards ceremony held on 2 July, Ysgol Bro Pedr won the secondary sector shield at an annual competition held by the Welsh Heritage Schools Initiative (WHSI). The award was given for a history project caried out by Year 8 pupils at the school. The project, ‘In and Out of Wales’ was ambitious and enriching, looking at migration and emigration. WHSI provides an opportunity for young people of all ages and abilities across Wales to take a greater interest in their heritage / cynefin, and the contribution made to it by their own communities. This year’s theme was…

With more motorists using Pembrokeshire’s car parks, drivers of electric vehicles are being reminded that many of the sites have electric vehicle (EV) charge-points for them to use. Publically-available charge points are provided in 18 locations across the county, thanks to a partnership between Pembrokeshire County Council and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority. “As a Council we are committed to being net zero by 2030 and electric vehicles form one of the strands of this work in relation to de-carbonisation of transport,” said Cllr Phil Baker, Cabinet Member for Infrastructure. The EV charge-points are in centrally located car parks to…

Staff at the Wernick Buildings factory have given a demonstration of a new four-bed hospital ward constructed at the firm’s premises on the Kenfig Industrial Estate in Port Talbot. The hospital ward, offering a high quality environment for healthcare professionals and patients, was created using Wernick’s latest modular building system known as HMflex. Modular construction is the process of using modules manufactured in a factory environment which are transported to site and connected together to form a complete building. This method of construction has many advantages over traditional build techniques. Those who viewed the demonstration on Friday, July 2nd, included…

Merthyr County Borough Council has announced ambitious long-term plans to help Merthyr Tydfil ‘buck the national trend of high street decline’ and transform into a thriving town centre. A team of urban designers, commercial property experts and engineering specialists providing transport advice have drawn up a 15-year Town Centre Masterplan. The ‘placemaking’ plan envisages that by 2035, the centre will have high quality residential, office, leisure and retail, new plazas, green spaces and ‘an active riverside’.  It says the aim is to create a centre ‘with inviting streets, squares and routes, where people feel safe, welcomed and uplifted’. The document…

RCT Council has confirmed that the A4233 Maerdy Mountain Road will be subject to daytime road closures on Mondays to Fridays throughout the school summer holiday, enabling necessary work to rectify storm damage. The mountain route, between Monk Street in Aberdare and Station Road in Maerdy, was damaged by Storm Dennis. The Council carried out works under a road closure during the ‘firebreak’ lockdown at the end of October 2020, to carry out significant drainage work as a result of a landslip – scheduled when ‘stay at home’ restrictions were in place in order to minimise disruption. This summer, further…

A series of works near A4061 Station Road and Treorchy Library will begin shortly – in order to widen the footway on the main road, remove the disused toilet block and future-proof several existing highways structures. Advanced work has been undertaken at this location over the past few weeks, in preparation for the Council’s contractor Walters Ltd to start the main element of the work from Wednesday, July 14. Demolition work will incorporate the disused toilet block opposite Treorchy Library, the river retaining wall which supports the grass verge, and the sub-standard cantilever which supports the footway on the main…

The Welsh Government has published its new five-year Work Programme for Cymraeg 2050, the national strategy to reach 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050. The Work Programme, the second since the launch of Cymraeg 2050 in 2017, sets out the policies Welsh Government will implement over the next five years towards reaching the 2050 targets. In addition to reaching a million speakers, there is also a goal to double the daily use of Welsh by 2050. One of the interim milestones is for 30% of children in Year 1 to be in Welsh-medium education by 2031. To help achieve that,…

The Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters today issued a “national call to arms” to ask the people of Wales to help to deliver real change to tackle the climate emergency. According to the Climate Change Committee, Wales needs to plant around 86 million trees over the next nine years to achieve its ambition of reaching net zero by 2050 The Deputy Minister was visiting Stump up for Trees a small charity planting 100,000 native broadleaf trees in an area called Bryn Arw, near Abergavenny – it is the first significant tree planting on common land in Wales. The…