‘PROVIDING JOBS’
“Excellent” UK Government Kickstart support has proved just the tonic for an awardwinning Welsh distillery.
Ellen Wakelam runs “small but ambitious” west coast distillery Welsh Wind, whose spirits include eight prize gins.
“The Kickstart Scheme is an excellent initiative. We’re offering local jobs for young people,” confirmed the 37 yearold, whose five full-time staff are now developing grain-toglass whisky with local farmers’ barley. “We’ve been approved for four placements,” continued Ellen, who lives near Cardigan. “We teamed up with a training company as our gateway provider to be approved and advertise the places. We think
we can offer young people really good insights into every aspect of the business such as the technical side of distilling as well as bottling, labelling, customer service, marketing and business insight.”
Added Ellen: “We’re really excited to be able to offer new roles that will give people experience and lots of transferable skills.”
One of Slough’s COVID-19 marshals has discussed the challenges involved with people following coronavirus rules.
Slough Borough Council recruited a team of coronavirus officers in October whose job is to encourage members of the public and businesses to comply with the Government’s COVID-19 laws.
Last month the council said it had seen a ‘dramatic increase’ in the number of complaints about businesses failing to comply with the rules in Slough.
Martin Allen, who manages the town’s COVID-19 officers, said his team’s main aim is to work with businesses to help them understand and follow the Government guidance.
He said: “Our role as the officers is about collaborating with the businesses more than anything and to a certain degree giving them advice persuading them to do their best.
“We’ve never been through anything like this before and with a lot of it there’s not even a legal duty. A lot of it is a moral or ethical duty for people to do things.”
Since starting working in Slough, the council’s COVID-19 officers have made more than 1,260 inspections of business premises, including takeaways, and are following up all complaints made by the public.
Mr Allen said the main issue his team face is businesses not carrying out mandatory COVID-19 risk assessments of their properties.
Failure to do a risk assessment and place signs on the door telling people to wear face coverings can lead to legal enforcement by the council.
Mr Allen added: “Lots of the businesses in Slough don’t have the money or resources to do some of the things the major supermarkets do.
“The main message I want to get across is the businesses have nothing to fear if they’re making the effort to try and comply and we want to work with them to try and achieve that.
“There’s no enforcement targets, there’s no drive to put people out of business or adversely impact on certain businesses.”
Ensuring members of the public wear face masks inside shops has also been a challenge but Mr Allen said when asked to put a mask on, most people in the town respond positively rather than becoming abusive.
Farnham Road has been a hotspot for coronavirus breaches throughout the pandemic with the area’s strip of takeaways attracting
A team of coronavirus marshals have been working in the community over the past few months to encourage people and businesses to follow COVID-19 laws in Slough. Express reporter spoke to operations manager Martin Allen about the challenges of the role.
large gatherings.
Mr Allen said the town’s COVID19 marshals are working alongside Thames Valley Police and takeaways to encourage people to disperse, but he added this is an issue that pre-dates the coronavirus crisis.
“We’ve spent a lot of time in Farnham Road and the issue with Farnham Road is not just a
COVID issue. Those issues were present before COVID-19 came along,” he added.
“A lot of the businesses down there are frustrated because they themselves get abuse when they try and tell members of the public to put masks on.
“It would be nice to have us there all the time but obviously we can’t be.”
Positive COVID-19 tests in Slough are continuing to fall but the town still has one of the highest infection rates in the country.
Mr Allen said the team’s ultimate aim remains to drive down infections in the borough and save lives.
He added: “It’s one of those things that’s really difficult to measure success for because there’s so many influences.
“It would be nice to say since we’ve been there we’ve achieved this and that in relation to the infection rates and death rates; ultimately that’s our aim.
“But there’s so many influences like the new variants so it’s impossible to say that.
“We’re just a small part in the big cog to try and bring that infection rate down.”