Area awakes to thin covering of snow

Llangollen awoke to a thin covering of snow this morning (Wednesday) as can be seen from these pictures of the castle and surrounding hills.

£103m for schools and colleges to help with Covid recovery

 * Education Minister Jeremy Miles.

Schools and colleges are to receive £103 million in Welsh Government funding as learners return for the January term.

£50m will be provided via local authorities through the Sustainable Communities for Learning programme. 

The funding will help schools carry out capital repair and improvement work, with a focus on health and safety measures, such as improving ventilation. 

The funding will also be used to support decarbonisation.

£45m of revenue funding will also help support school budgets, assisting schools as they continue to deal with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and to prepare for the requirements of the new curriculum.

An additional £8m will be provided to further education colleges, to ensure learning can continue safely and ensure the most disadvantaged learners are not further impacted by the pandemic.

Jeremy Miles, the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, said: “I know schools and colleges have faced a very difficult time and everyone across the workforce has worked incredibly hard to meet the challenges of the pandemic. This funding will further support our schools and colleges to keep settings as Covid-secure as possible.

“While we want to support the sector in recovering from the pandemic, we also have to make sure we continue to plan for the future, and help all education settings across Wales fulfil our collective goals of making Wales a net-zero nation.

“The funding announced today will help us to ensure sustainability across the sector – be that the environmental sustainability achieved through decarbonisation, or sustainability in provision.”

This week's 2020 project works programme

 

This week's planned work programme for the town's 2020 project is:

• set up the traffic management for phase 2 of the works
• pave the junction of Bridge Street with Castle Street near the Royal Hotel
• start the footpath excavation on Market Street south at the end near the car park
• start excavating the new kerb line on Castle Street east near the junction to Oak Street, heading south toward the A5

Search team rescues injured hiker above Horseshoe Falls

* Newsar's picture of the rescue yesterday.

Leader Live is reporting this morning (Tuesday) that a search and rescue team was called out to assist with an injured hiker in Llangollen.

The story says: "On Monday afternoon North Wales Police asked North East Wales Search and Rescue (NEWSAR) to assist a woman who had sustained a leg injury on a hill above the Horseshoe Falls.

"Team members quickly reached the site and provided pain relief and splinting, before using a rope system to protect the stretcher on the steeper parts of the journey down to the road.

"The woman was then conveyed to hospital by a private car."

* For the full story, see: https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/19822428.llangollen-search-rescue-team-assists-injured-hiker/?fbclid=IwAR2sCU3y4FHBn0OtS6akblQZTud6Cc2jXcaN-q1sN5QWLbtNGJS_ExLRhTU

Care homes on Covid "war footing" warns sector boss

* Mario Kreft MBE, chair of Care Forum Wales.

Care homes in Wales are on a “war footing” because of desperate staff shortages caused by the skyrocketing Covid infection rate, according to a sector leader.

Mario Kreft MBE, chair of Care Forum Wales, says the homes are facing their worst ever crisis with reports that 75% of staff were off work in some of them, either because they had contracted Coronavirus or were self-isolating.

The situation is so bad that as a last resort homes were introducing “firebreaks” to temporarily restrict visiting as the highly infectious Omicron variant tore across Wales, he claims.

Domiciliary care companies were also struggling badly and were often unable to provide the usual level of care.

Mr Kreft warned that the situation was only going to get worse before things got better.

So much so, that some care homes were likely to be forced to declare an NHS-style “critical incident” because they were unable to cope.

But he feared reinforcements might not be available because statutory organisations like local health boards and councils were also short of staff.

Mr Kreft said: “The scale of the challenge is one we have never faced before. It’s really, really tough out there.

“The First Minister reminded us in 2020 that the social care sector was in a fragile state before the pandemic because of its precarious finances and the shortage of staff.

“After two  year of this, the pressures  have been building up and now we’re facing a completely different challenge because the Omicron strain of Covid is so prevalent and so transmissible.

“As a result, we’re seeing problems we’ve not encountered before.

“Care Forum Wales members have been reporting being down by up to 75 per cent in terms of staffing shifts. We’re on a war footing.

“The social care workforce has been heroic right through this pandemic. It’s taken a pandemic for people to realise how essential these workers are – just in the same way as the NHS and other services.

“They are rising to the challenge but it’s incredibly difficult and it’s probably going to get much worse before it gets better.

“It’s quite possible that some care homes will have to call on the statutory services. There are plans in place and we have been working with Welsh Government and our colleagues  in health boards and local government.

“We may have to declare what the NHS would call a critical incident and in that case the only place you can go is the statutory agencies.

“The trouble is that we all know they are suffering like everybody else at the moment so whether there would be people available to alleviate the crisis, I don’t know.

“What we are talking about is making sure that people are as comfortable and as safe as they can be.

“This also applies to our domiciliary care workers who are facing similar challenges, so the visits to people’s homes may not be as long or as often as they might have been until we get through this.

“Nobody understands the importance of care home visiting better than those that run and work in care homes. It’s essential to people’s wellbeing and we’ve had decades of open house visiting without any appointments.

“The last two years  have been incredibly challenging and I think people need to understand that safe visiting currently also requires a staffing input which makes it even more difficult if you are short of staff and don’t have the capacity to ensure safe visiting.

“I don’t think there have been any situations where people haven’t been allowed to visit for people in very extreme circumstances.

“I think what we’ll see is firebreaks or temporary pauses in terms of visiting individual care homes.

“The responsibility is clearly with the registered manager and the organisation running each setting.

“All the registered providers have legal responsibilities towards their residents and they also have responsibility for the health and safety of their own staff.

“I think what we’ll see – and we’re starting to see it already  - is that visiting will be restricted for a period of days or a week or so because quite simply there will not be the staff to ensure safe visiting.

“The other added complication is that care homes are now unable to secure insurance against Covid-related claims so they really cannot afford to take any risks.

“But as soon as we and ensure safe visiting again, we will revert to that. That’s what people have been doing over Christmas and New Year. All I would ask from people is understanding because it is such a difficult time.”

Businesses can check how much Covid-19 help they will get

* Economy Minister Vaughan Gething.

Businesses in Wales impacted by the rapid spread of the Omicron virus can now find out how much they can expect to receive in emergency financial support from the Welsh Government.

Economy Minister Vaughan Gething previously said £120m would be available for retail, hospitality, leisure and tourism business and their supply chains affected by the move to alert level 2 announced by the First Minister on Wednesday 22 December.

The support package includes funding from the Economic Resilience Fund (ERF), with an eligibility checker for this fund now live on the Business Wales website.

This will help businesses, including charities and social enterprises, to gauge how much they can expect to receive from the ERF.

Eligible businesses can apply for grants of between £2,500k - £25,000, with grants dependent on their size and number of employees.

The application window for the ERF will open in week commencing 17 January 2022, with payments starting to reach businesses within days. The application window will be open for two weeks.

Mr Gething, said: “We recognise that businesses are facing another hugely uncertain time due to the Omicron variant of Coronavirus. The eligibility checker which goes live today will help them forward plan during this challenging period.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve provided over £2.6bn of support to businesses throughout Wales to help them manage their way through difficult circumstances. This latest £120 million package of support will further assist impacted businesses and we will get financial support to them as quickly as possible.”

Non-essential retail, hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses in Wales will also receive support from the Non Domestic Rates (NDR) linked grant which will be administered by Local Authorities. Businesses will be entitled to a payment of £2,000, £4,000 or £6,000 depending on their rateable value.

Local Authorities will also be administrating a discretionary fund for sole traders, freelancers and taxi drivers and businesses that employee people but do not pay business rates.

The registration process for the NDR linked grants and application process for the discretionary fund will open week commencing the 10 January 2022.

* The ERF eligibility checker can be found at: https://fundchecker.businesswales.gov.wales/businesssupport

There's now more time to get involved in Llangollen's People's Plan

You now have more time to have your say on Llangollen’s People’s Plan.

And to let everyone know how and by when they can get involved every household in the town is this week to receive a reminder through the post.

Known as Caru Llangollen, the plan has been prepared by a team of volunteers with the aim of providing a comprehensive vision for how our town should develop over the next four years. 

The suggestions in it are based on what the group Shape My Llangollen was told by the people of the area in a series of pre-pandemic public consultation sessions when they were asked about what they liked or didn't like about the town and how they reckon it could be improved.

These consultation sessions generated over 1,700 separate answers.

And, based on what they were told, the volunteers produced the final draft of the plan which contains around 90 proposals for improving Llangollen and its quality of life and work up until the year 2026. 

Shape My Llangollen is now in the process of putting the People's Plan back to the people for the last time before producing the final version.

This will then go before the Town Council - which set them the original task in 2018 - for approval and adoption a little later this year.

During the first week of December the group successfully completed their round of face-to-face comment gathering on the plan outside the Town Hall.

Originally the public had until December 31 to have their say on Caru Llangollen.

But feedback has been so enthusiastic that the group has now decided to extend the deadline for comments by another month, until January 31, so even more people can take part in the process. 

Hard copies of the plan are available in Llangollen library as well as online and to give the consultation an extra boost the group has now arranged for notes to be posted through every household in the town inviting comments to be made through written or emailed responses.   

Phil Robinson, who chairs SML, said: “We’ve been receiving some really valuable and positive comments on the plan to the extent where we decided to give people a bit more time to send in their comments. They now have until the end of January to tell us what they think about it.   

“This final round of public consultation is extremely important as it will be the last chance for people to have their say on this vital and far-reaching vision of the town’s future development.

"This is truly the People's Plan and something which has never been done before in Llangollen.

"I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the trouble to send in their comments so far and I invite as many people as possible to take part.”

* To look through the plan online - and turn it over page by page - go to: https://pubhtml5.com/gaql/ahfd

* Send in your comments by emailing the Town Clerk at: townclerk@llangollentowncouncil.gov.uk by January 31.