A (birthday) party political broadcast on behalf of The Raikes Journal
When The Raikes Journal relaunched it did so from ground zero, relying on its stories and a belief that independent local journalism would drive readership. A year on, this is where we are.
Dear readers,
Welcome to your first edition of The Raikes Journal of the week.
Last week we took a look at how the solution to the shortage of cyber skills might not be as simple as training more young people. It might, on the face of it anyway, be even simpler!
Still on the subject of skills, on Thursday we revealed how an exciting multi-million pound scheme has been hatched to build a new construction school beside Gloucester Quays.
And on Friday we were back at Gloucestershire Airport. We’re not alone in writing about how the airport is up for sale - its owners, Gloucester City Council and Cheltenham Borough Council putting it on the market last year.
Seemingly unable to move without creating interest and drama, it has not emerged that the airport’s debt continues to grow - to £15 million, while it continues to fail to break even too.
But today’s main story is about The Raikes Journal. It’s a year on from our re-launch. We look at where we are.
Flying high and climbing is the short or it. For every one of you that read or shared our stories, referred us to friends and colleagues, became a subscriber or one of our incredible Founding Partners, Founding Members or paid-up subscribers, here’s to you!
Thank you.
Remember, for every person you refer to The Raikes Journal’s email service you get points towards a free membership allowing you to see beyond our paywalls. Please do sign up (free or otherwise), refer a friend or colleague, and help us grow.
Have a great week.
Andrew Merrell (editor).
If you have a story, an issue, a news item, a charity or an interview you want us to write about or investigate, challenge the powers that be on, then please email me: andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Your charity of the week… The Nelson Trust celebrates
This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Nelson Trust’s support of what it calls ‘the recovery community’. It currently provides “holistic, trauma-informed and gender-specific support to more than 4,000 individuals every year” and its service now stretches across the South West of England and Wales. The charity was founded in 1985 in Stroud by Roy and Mary Brash, who bought The Nelson Inn and turned it into a residential rehabilitation centre for people experiencing drug and alcohol use. Today the trust has four single-gendered residential treatment centres for abstinence-based recovery, and three move on recovery housing for those leaving treatment. And it has five community projects, including the Hub Academy in Stroud and The Sober Parrot cafe in Cheltenham. Its first women’s centre opened in 2010, providing holistic support to women leaving prison, and women in the community on probation orders, as an alternative to custody, and it now runs nine centres across England and Wales. To celebrate its 40th anniversary a range of events are being lined up throughout 2025, including Women in Leadership event in June, which celebrates women in business throughout Gloucestershire, its annual Clay Shoot and Dinner in May and its first golf day in September. You can read more about it via its 40 Stories for 40 Years series on its website from February.
Your briefing notes
🤝 With National Apprenticeship Week this week we wanted to flag an event due to take place at Gloucestershire College that will continue the theme later this month - aimed at both employers and wannabe apprentices. The college is due to stage its apprenticeship open evening 2025 on Wednesday 26 February from 5pm to 8pm at its Gloucester campus, Llanthony Road, Gloucester (GL2 5JQ). Turn up and you’ll meet more than 40 businesses from six ‘industry zones’ and be able to ask questions about apprenticeship vacancies and hear about apprenticeships from the college’s award-winning team - and from current and past apprentices about their experiences. Find out more on Eventbrite.*
🍸🏗️ You wonder whether Julian Dunkerton wishes he never got involved in rescuing the once run-down listed building he turned into the successful Cheltenham restaurant, bar and boutique hotel No.131 Promenade. On Thursday this week Dunkerton will learn if borough council planners will allow him to install a pergola at the front of the building, allowing the business to continue to benefit from the customer base established since it installed the temporary marquees during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s the listed-building status that is the sticking point. Officers are recommending refusal.
👯 Cheltenham Borough Council has launched a six-week consultation on proposed amendments to its licensing policy for sexual entertainment venues (SEVs) in Cheltenham. The consultation is set to close on 24 March 2025. According to the local authority it cannot take any moral stand in relation to the licensing of SEVs and must restrict itself to matters of safety after Parliament made it lawful to operate a sex entertainment establishment and that such businesses are “a legitimate part of the retail and leisure industries”.
💷 Over 100 business, university and local authority leaders are reported to have voiced their support for the UK’s only cross-border Pan-Regional Partnership as part of a government consultation on a “minded to” decision to withdraw funding. Businesses from a range of different sectors, alongside universities, local authorities, and other organisations, have let the partnership know that they have stepped forward to voice their support for the Western Gateway and its potential to boost the economy of South Wales and Western England in response to the UK Government.
Firm caught up in legal action over River Wye pollution
Lawyers who launched legal action against businesses accused of polluting the River Wye, including a firm from Gloucestershire, have now added another name to their list of targets.
By Gavin McEwan. BBC Local Democracy Reporter.
A law firm representing hundreds of people and businesses impacted by River Wye pollution, and taking legal action against a Gloucestershire business and a large Herefordshire employer, now has the local water company in its sights.
Leigh Day launched a civil claim last March against farming group Freemans of Newent and Hereford-based poultry supplier Avara Foods, over what it claimed was their contribution to damaging nutrient pollution in local waterways.
In May the law firm expanded its heavily publicised action to include Avara’s joint parent company, US food and farming giant Cargill, sending it an initial “letter before action” in July.
The companies deny the allegations.
Leigh Day has since advertised widely through various channels for people affected by the issue to join the legal action, leading to over 1,500 organisations and individuals joining the move, and has now set up an office in Hereford to coordinate the case.
It has now expanded the legal move to include Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, which manages water supply and sewerage in the river Wye catchment on both sides of the border, including most of Herefordshire.
Damaging phosphorus and nitrates are present in discharges from water company’s treatment plants, just as they are from manure from the area’s many chicken farms which is used locally as a fertiliser, Leigh Day says.
It has now also sent Welsh Water a letter before action, claiming these discharges have given rise to problems with odour, insect swarms, biodiversity loss and poor water quality, affecting residents’ enjoyment of the river and also local businesses.
Leigh Day partner Oliver Holland, who is leading the claim, said: “We believe that the evidence points to Welsh Water as a major contributor to the pollution of the Wye, Usk and Lugg.”
The move is supported by national campaign group River Action, whose chair Charles Watson said it “is shaping up to be one of the most significant pieces of litigation over river pollution in the UK”.
A spokesperson for Welsh Water said it needed time to consider the contents of the letter before action before responding.
“We take our responsibility for protecting the environment seriously, and over the next five years will invest £2.5 billion to improve the environment,” they added.
Leigh Day will meanwhile hold an event at Hereford’s Left Bank on the evening of Thursday February 20 for residents to discuss its claim.
BBC Local Democracy Reporter. Hereford: gavin.mcewan@newsquest.co.uk
Dates for your diary…
Tuesday 11 February.
Law firm WSP’s evergreen lunchtime networking event Tapas Tuesday is due to take place from noon until 2pm at Sebz Cafe Tapas Restaurant in Northgate Street, Gloucester.
Wednesday 12 February.
University of Gloucestershire will also be marking National Apprenticeship Week 2025, with its inaugural Apprenticeship Awards in front of an audience including employers from sectors including cyber and computing, health and social care, business and education.
Join Business West Chamber and Cheltenham Chamber for The Bank of England’s South West Monetary Policy Report Briefing, which at the Pittville Pump Room. Free to chamber members and open to businesses from the local business community. Booking is essential and via Eventbrite.
The Forest Economic Partnership will be heading to the Wilderness Centre in Mitcheldean for its first meeting of 2025, joined by sustainability experts offering support to local businesses who want to become greener but have no idea where to start. From 5pm to 6.30pm.
Hartpury Agri-Tech Centre is due to stage another of its Farm Forward Demos – this one called Robots and Sensors. See how cutting-edge tech like robotics, sensors, 5G and virtual tools are transforming farming - and hear from experts Verfacil and TH White Group. From 12.30 to 4pm. Find out more here.
A workshop focusing on email marketing is due to take place at The Growth Hub, Gloucester, from 9.30am to 12.30pm. Aimed at business owners who use or want to use email marketing.
Thursday 13 February
How to successfully apply for a patent. Experienced patent attorney Florian Bazant-Hegemark will provide an insight into the patent system, and offer tips on how to make the patent system work as a commercial tool for your company via these 1-2-1 zoom sessions staged by The Growth Hub, Tewkesbury. Book in advance.
* The Raikes Journal is a community interest company. Everything you read by us is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you subscribe and invite friends to The Raike Journal you will earn rewards towards complimentary membership (three referrals will get you one month, 10 will get you three months and 25 will win you six months).
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls often put on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable to deliver more original articles on our county.
You can sign up to receive your two extra editions a week and see past all our paywalls for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. Or go all in and become one of our Founding Partners or Founding Members!
How's The Raikes Journal doing one year in?
When The Raikes Journal relaunched it did so from ground zero, relying on its stories and a belief that independent local journalism would drive readership. A year on, this is where we are.
By Andrew Merrell.
I’m hardly likely to begin an article championing what The Raikes Journal is all about - what it’s achieved after a year back in action and what it will continue to do - and tell you it’s a disaster.
If I did, it would be a lie.
The BBC, no less, has just rubber-stamped what we do here too to allow us to use its resource. It doesn’t do that with many.
When I relaunched this digital magazine email service in February 2024 the mission was to establish a credible, trusted, independent, editorially led platform using original journalism.
Its focus would be on businesses, charities, education and training and it would be free of pop-ups, unedited press releases, clickbait, advertorials and lists of stuff.
This in itself would set it apart - to complement and counter the marketing and PR-driven world of social media that business ‘news’ in Gloucestershire and many other places had become. Raikes would not chase every press release and fire as many stories as it could muster at you daily, believing that is what value is. It would be more considered.
Which is why Raikes doesn’t race at you at 100 miles per hour. Neither is its editorial policy led by boring algorithms.
It’s curated by a human being - to create a safe, trusted place to park up, turn off the noise, enjoy the view, get some context, remember what it’s like to enjoy reading something, and get you closer to your county and your community.
We believe that an impartial, trusted third-party platform, journalistically-led, telling you stories based on editorial merit, is a valuable piece of the pie in a landscape now top-heavy with the marketing, PR and advertorial-led and owned platforms and often brilliant social media by many, many businesses.
We don’t believe we can see another operation that does what Raikes does here in Gloucestershire.
Raikes first launched and ran for a year in the Covid-19 pandemic to support county businesses, sustain community and fill the void left by the collapse of trusted regional journalism.
We knew the lie of the land well. This journalist has interviewed more businesses and reported on the sector, on the charity, education and training sectors longer than any in Gloucestershire, but Raikes also needed to deliver something new. And we think we have.
By the start of 2025 our three weekly email editions are received by a growing audience we think is at the heart of the business community and county decision makers – and we believe, pound-for-pound, our email service out punches any other.
As we said above, Raikes has permission to use copy from the BBC. It took a look at what we did and agreed it was quality, independent, valuable community journalism it was willing to support. We’re thrilled.
We have passed 10,000 views a month from our three lead editions a week and we have 700-plus subscribers and growing. That’s organically grown, real subscribers - an unusual ‘fat-free’ database in the county in that has it’s share of ‘full-fat’ alternatives.
We have more than 10,000 connections on LinkedIn and growing, 2,500-plus on X, hundreds of Facebook and a valuable beginning on BlueSky. Posts on Linkedin get 1,000-plus views and often 2,000-plus (we’ve not touched 5,000 yet - but we’ve been close). You can see why we think we can increase our reach further.
Each email edition of Raikes is led by a single long-read story. Monday’s is always free, Thursdays and Friday’s full edition are often (but not always) part pay-walled to help pay for what we do. All of them are then archived on our website.
We are kept alive and on our toes by our subscribers, and especially our paid-up member subscribers, Founding Members and most of all by our incredible Founding Partners – all Gloucestershire businesses - who see the benefit of having a credible platform we hope the county can be proud of.
They include Willans LLP solicitors, QuoLux, Randall & Payne, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and more and we are truly grateful to them all. They make what we do possible and give Gloucestershire this digital platform.
Why bother subscribing when you can get it all free elsewhere?
You can’t. Our main stories are original. We actually talk to people, we check things out, we listen. We love all of that.
So, if you see value in a platform like Raikes, if you understand what it is to start a business, need support and get it, if you want the shop window of Gloucestershire to be better and look better, if you think there is a place for a credible editorially and journalistically led platform, if you like to read interesting stories about your county, if you care about local journalism and think the county deserves it – if you answer ‘yes’ to those then please come on board.
Or go one step further even and consider becoming one of our Founding Partners, Founding Members or paid for subscribers.
Your commitment will get our attention when it comes to what we write about.
Video and social media are powerful tools to promote your news, but nothing gets into people’s minds quite like the written word. That’s our medium. It remains, in our view, the most powerful and most meaningful way of communicating the most powerful tool there is - stories. Your stories.