WREXHAM Council has recorded 630 redundancies in Wrexham in the last year.

The last 12 months have been difficult for businesses throughout the UK - and Wrexham is no exception.

The largest number of redundancies was at the county's Magellan plant, indicative of the hardship experienced globally by the aerospace industry during the pandemic.

Over the last 12 months there have been a total of 630 redundancies recorded as follows:

  • Magellan 240
  • IMC 100+
  • Crazy Ladies 10
  • Caparo 80
  • Charles Owen 40
  • JCB 80
  • Tyson foods 80

However, Wrexham Council has paid out more than £3.6m in Covid Economic Recovery Funds.

And there are signs of recovery.

In the first coronavirus recovery briefing, a council spokesman said: "The last 12 months has been very challenging for all businesses with certain sectors being harder hit than others, with aerospace, automotive, retail and hospitality suffering the most with many forced to close, make redundancies or needing to furlough staff. The landscape over the last couple of months has been one of improving economic conditions for almost all sectors (hospitality being the notable exception) with many receiving increased orders and production levels returning to ‘normal’ levels.

"Food production, construction (trades), packaging and manufacturing businesses have been reporting high levels of demand and increase activity resulting in many recruiting addition staff.

"At recent Business forums held on Llay and Vauxhall industrial estates almost without exception the businesses in attendance reported good trading conditions and were optimistic that economic recovery was well on its way."

Covid Economic Recovery Funds received in Wrexham can be broken down as follows:

  • Start Up – 90 awarded £225,000
  • Firebreak – 389 awarded £708,500
  • Freelancer phase 1 – 74 awarded £185,000
  • Freelancer phase 1 Automatic Payment – 57 awarded £142,500
  • Business Restrictions 1 – 533 awarded £1,066,000
  • Business Restrictions 2 – 681 awarded £1,362,000