A project designed to support local businesses and help people work closer to home has launched across the county borough with five new spaces available.

Run by Caerphilly-based coworking and small business experts, Town Square Spaces Ltd (TownSq), Cowork Local Caerphilly follows previous successful projects in Swansea, the Vale of Glamorgan and Denbighshire. It will enable places to offer flexible working, giving unused spaces a new lease of life and providing established venues with another source of income.

A grant of up to £1,800 was available to each venue to cover the cost of setting up, and support to get the spaces up and running was provided by TownSq.

The new workspaces are part of previously established venues including hotels, rugby clubs and business centres. They are; Oxford House in Risca, Newbridge Hotel in Newbridge, Tredoman Business and Technology Centre in Ystrad Mynach, Machen RFC in Machen and the Community Volunteers Wales run The Pantri, also in Risca.

Mandy Weston, Chief Operating Officer for TownSq is managing the project and said:

“We’re delighted to get Cowork Local Caerphilly up and running with our five founder venues. The project aims to get more people working closer to home, helping reduce commutes and providing flexible working options outside city centres. Having people work within our communities is an important part of boosting the local economy, as when more people work local, they shop local, which helps support businesses in and around the county borough. 

“Through the SPF project, we’ve been able to support a number of local venues into offering workspace and meeting rooms, helping them start and giving them access to the software which will help them run their new spaces.

“Cowork Local has been something we have continually developed as part of TownSq, with the pilot projects across other parts of Wales being a big success. Since then the platform has grown to enable venues to offer and manage availability, bookings and payments – helping them to increase revenue and footfall into their spaces.”

Tara Holloway-Scott is the Founder of Community Volunteers Wales which works to support vulnerable people in the community. It also runs The Pantri in Risca which, through the project, is now a coworking venue. 

Tara said:

“We’re thrilled to be part of this fantastic initiative, which will not only help bring in essential funding to support The Pantri, but also provide a much-needed, affordable workspace for local people. The support from TownSq has been invaluable in getting us set up, and we’re excited to see how this will benefit the community.”

The funding is part of a wider collaboration project between small business support and coworking specialists Town Square Spaces Ltd (TownSq) and the Welsh Innovation Centre for Enterprise (ICE) to boost enterprise across the County Borough as part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF).

To view the venues in your area and book a workspace, you can head to platform.coworklocal.co.uk/hubs