A well-known car dealership which recently opened a Porsche dearlership in Newport is aiming to help youngsters from the city.

Family-owned Dick Lovett Group recently opened its biggest UK dealership, Porsche Centre Newport, at Celtic Springs Business Park. The branch employs 70 people.

It moved from its Cardiff location to a larger, purpose-built site on the west of Newport, making it their only branch in Wales.

Newport councillors James Clarke, Trevor Watkins and Allan Screen visited the dealership, where they found out from Emma Newton, recruitment marketing executive at the company, about its charitable and community work.

The Lovett Foundation works with care leavers in the South West and Wales giving them assistance, life skills and experiences, and discussions are taking place about doing something similar in Newport.

School visits and careers events are very important to the company as it seeks to promote working in the car industry to children and young people.

Cllr Clarke said: “It is very positive that the Dick Lovett Group chose the city for their new Welsh headquarters. It demonstrates that businesses do have confidence in Newport as a great place to locate.

“It was extremely pleasing to hear about the company’s ambition to work with young care leavers in our city and to talk to children and young people about the varied opportunities that are available in the car industry including salespeople and highly trained vehicle technicians.

“I would like to thank Emma and the team for such an interesting visit and demonstrating such commitment to Newport.”

Ms Newton said: “We were thrilled to welcome the councillors to Porsche Centre Newport to discuss how we can work together to showcase careers in the automotive industry to local schools. Porsche has fantastic training programmes and the automotive industry is a great career path for driven and ambitious individuals.

“The Lovett Foundation is Dick Lovett Group’s own charity and we have worked with partner charities in Bristol, Cardiff, and Swindon to provide experiences which young people would find beneficial to their development. 

"We hope to build new partnerships in the Newport area to directly contribute to a brighter future for young adults leaving care.”