When we approached Avonmouth CofE Primary School, the staff highlighted a shortage of up-to-date laptops for pupils and wondered if National Grid could help.

Avonmouth school is the closest to our works and serves the community in one of the more deprived areas of Bristol, so we were keen to do all we could.

Approaching contacts across the business, we were able to source 40 laptops and have them installed with Windows 10 and MS Office. Buying these laptops would have cost the school £28,000.

With this year marking the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), we’re sharing some fascinating wartime images from the National Grid archives.

Kerry Moores, who manages the archive explains: “Our predecessors in the companies that later became National Grid worked hard through the war to keep power flowing. With significant numbers of employees away in the armed forces, we also saw a shift towards more women taking on traditionally male roles.”

Parts of the path, including a section from Yatton to Cheddar, are already complete and enjoyed by thousands of cyclists, walkers and parents with buggies. The new Sandford substation sits close to where the path currently runs along Nye Road, a busy, narrow country lane.

To improve the path in this area, we’re making space available around the boundary of the new substation to re-route this section off-road and we’ll build a quality hard surface suitable for all users. This work should be completed by mid 2023.

American mink were first imported to the United Kingdom for fur-farming in the 1920s and by the Late 1950s escapees had established themselves in the wild. The proliferation of mink has been linked to a decline in water vole populations and is known to have had a damaging effect on nesting birds and fish stocks.

There is currently unprecedented demand on radiologists as a result of the additional chest x-ray examinations being carried out as part of the diagnostic process for Covid-19.  These workstations enable radiologists to review patients’ x-rays and make urgent diagnoses from the safety and isolation of their homes, both protecting themselves at this critical time and saving lives. 

The settlement sits in a wealthy Roman landscape, not far from ancient lead mines at Charterhouse-on-Mendip. Daniel Connor, Project Archaeologist for principal contractors Balfour Beatty, said: “The site has a wonderful level of preservation, with archaeological deposits starting just below ground level. This has allowed our investigation to start from the demolition of the last phase of building all the way to the earliest phase of activity on site.”

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