Multi award-winning South West holiday park Cofton Holidays has scooped the Environment and Sustainability award at the Western Morning News Business Awards 2021, recognising its sustained conservation efforts during the pandemic.
The family-run business, based near Dawlish Warren, was presented with the award at a black-tie event at Plymouth’s Crowne Plaza. After facing fierce competition from category finalists including Accord Healthcare, LiveWest and SunGift Solar Ltd, Cofton walked away with the Environment and Sustainability title.
Work on Marsh Barton railway station is progressing well and remains on track for completion next winter.
Construction on the station, which is located near the Energy from Waste plant on the eastern edge of Marsh Barton, started last spring.
Development of the two platforms is ongoing and concrete piles and pile caps have been completed on both platforms. Concrete beams and slabs have been installed on platform one.
Work is underway on the foundations for the pedestrian and cycle bridge which is due to be installed in the coming months. This bridge will provide...
Exeter-based broadband company, Jurassic Fibre, has helped raise money for Devon charity Hospiscare by helping them swap Christmas trees for cash.
The award-winning telecoms company, which is currently delivering gigabit connectivity to overlooked communities across the South West, supported Hospiscare by volunteering staff members and vans to assist in the charity’s Christmas Tree Recycling fundraiser.
The initiative involved collecting people’s Christmas trees to recycle in exchange for donations to Hospiscare. 1,200 trees were collected from Exeter, Exmouth and Honiton...
FoodCycle , the charity that aims to make food poverty, loneliness and food waste a thing of the past for every community, is in urgent need of volunteers. This month, FoodCycle will invest in a national recruitment campaign to try to entice more people to join them.
While volunteer roles are open to anyone who has some time to spare, the current drive will particularly target retired members of the community.
Alex Hatherly, South West Regional Manager explains why:
“Only around 3% of our FoodCycle volunteers are retired yet we’ve found with the combination of...
A Dartmoor woodland has been given a tidy-up thanks to a team of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers. Working with Dartmoor National Park’s Rangers Ella Briens and Ethan Parsons and Dartmoor Headwaters Project Officer Kerry Smith, the group spent a Sunday morning removing tree guards from a native woodland in the Dean Burn valley near Buckfastleigh. Seventeen volunteers joined Ella, Ethan and Kerry for the volunteer event on January 9 and the collective hard work was a success because they collected up hundreds of tree-guards – filling five big dumpy bags. It’s hoped the tree-guards can...
The Private Equity team at Foot Anstey LLP reported a record level of activity for 2021, completing 30 private equity backed deals in the calendar year, despite continued turbulence and uncertainty. Highlights during this exceptionally busy period saw the team strengthen existing relationships with private equity firms August Equity and Livingbridge, and their portfolios, and support the Access Group on multiple acquisitions.
Private equity-backed buyouts and portfolio bolt-on acquisitions are a deep specialism for Foot Anstey's nationally focused private equity team and these...
The world’s largest garden wildlife survey returns, with hundreds of thousands of people watching and counting the UK’s garden birds over the last weekend in January for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
Over a million people took part in 2021, counting 17 million birds – making it the biggest Birdwatch ever! In Devon, nearly 29,000 people joined in.
Over the past year, we’ve seen how important the natural world is to our mental health and wellbeing. There has been a surge in interest in the nature on our doorsteps and many people have come to rely on garden birds to...
99% of bathing waters in England have passed water quality standards following testing at over 400 designated sites carried out by the Environment Agency (EA). The results, released today (19 January), show that for the 2021 bathing season 94.7% of England's beaches and inland waters gained an ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ rating while 4.3% achieved the minimum ‘Sufficient’ rating. This compares with 98.3% passing the required standards in 2019, and is the highest number since new standards were introduced in 2015. For the first time ever, 100% of designated bathing waters in Devon and Cornwall...
A group of cat volunteers are celebrating the successful homing of the final group of kittens from a farm near Honiton.
Cats Protection’s Honiton Branch had a busy year, rehoming more than 40 cats during 2021 and neutering 163 cats by October. However, it has been the most recent humane trapping of a pregnant female cat at a farm outside Monkton that has been cause for most celebration.
Originally contacted when three young kittens and some feral adults were seen around the farm, the branch set humane traps and was able to catch the kittens and take them into care. Two...
The British Heart Foundation shop in Exeter is urgently appealing for volunteers this New Year, as it gets back up and running, following the pandemic.
This January, the shop is encouraging the public to give the gift of time and get involved – whether that’s working the till, sorting donations or welcoming customers. The BHF has plenty of exciting volunteering roles available for those looking to support their local community, improve their wellbeing and widen their social network while supporting a good cause.
The charity’s 712 nationwide shops are bouncing back...
