My signature summer dish reflects this beautifully: pan-seared wild seabass with wild garlic and cockle velouté, accompanied by crispy confit potato, asparagus, and a bright lemon gel. It offers a delicate balance of fresh coastal flavours, citrus lift, and refined textures, capturing both elegance and the essence of the season.

Who inspires you? 

I have two answers to this.

The first isn’t a “who,” but a “what.” For me, inspiration in the kitchen often comes from beyond it. I love exploring new places and drawing on the cultural differences, flavours, and ingredients found around the world.

The second is the people around me. I take great inspiration from my colleagues: both in the kitchen and across the hotel and restaurant at The Close. We’re all passionate individuals who share a genuine love for working in the beautiful world of hospitality.

Which three kitchen tools could you not do without?

The three kitchen tools I can’t live without are my razor-sharp chef’s knife, trusty cast-iron skillet, and instant-read meat thermometer – the essentials I reach for every single day.

How long did you train for? 

Honestly, I think we’re always training – always learning something new through life and every experience along the way.

What is your greatest achievement as a chef?

My greatest achievement as a chef is seeing the people I’ve trained go on to thrive and make their mark in the culinary world. Watching their passion, confidence, and talent grow is incredibly rewarding.

On a personal level, some of my proudest recent achievements include being named Chef of the Year and earning AA Rosettes for culinary excellence.

What challenges do you face in the kitchen? 

One of the ongoing challenges in the kitchen is balancing creativity with consistency — continually developing new ideas while ensuring every dish is delivered to the highest standard. It keeps us focused, motivated, and always learning as a team.

The Close

Long St, Tetbury GL8 8AQ
Tel: 01666 502272
Web: cotswold-inns-hotels.co.uk/the-close-hotel

Cala Homes Chiltern visited St Edburg’s CE Primary School as part of its Stay Safe, Stay Away programme to raise awareness among children about the dangers of construction sites.

The visit formed part of the school’s Careers Week and included an interactive talk on jobs in the homebuilding industry, along with a strong warning about the hazards of unsupervised entry onto building sites.

Fiona Mowbray, customer services director at Cala Chiltern, said: “The Stay Safe, Stay Away programme is designed to spread the message to children that construction sites are not somewhere to play around.

“Although we ensure all Cala sites are secure, young people must be aware of the dangers of entering a construction area, so they don’t put themselves or their friends in harm’s way.”

Ms Mowbray also gave pupils an insight into how Cala works to keep its nearby Himley Village development safe, while children took part in practical activities and tried on protective clothing.

The programme, part of Cala Homes’ wider Community Pledge, also included classroom tasks such as designing safety posters and writing news articles.

Tina Woodgate, Year 5 teacher and computing lead at St Edburg’s, said: “We’re grateful to Cala Homes for coming into school and delivering a really interesting session on site safety and careers in construction as part of our Career’s Week.

“The children gained valuable insights into the various roles within the construction industry and they came away inspired.”

Gamma has outlined a sales push for PCI payment security tools aimed at small and medium-sized businesses that take card payments by phone, arguing the market extends far beyond large insurers and financial groups.

In a podcast discussion, Gamma executives made the case for tighter controls around telephone payments. They argued that smaller firms are often exposed to fraud, chargebacks and compliance risks without fully recognising the issue as PCI-related.

Andy Herring, Commercial and Strategy Product Manager at Gamma, and Ed Savory, Channel Head for the South East at Gamma, focused much of the discussion on the impact on small businesses rather than the large corporates that have traditionally dominated compliance conversations.

Savory cited UK card fraud losses of more than GBP £572 million and said the direct effect on smaller merchants can be severe when disputed transactions lead to chargebacks.

“Chargebacks happen when a transaction is questioned by the cardholder, whether because of suspected fraud or because they believe they were charged the wrong amount,” Savory said. “That starts a process that usually ends with the customer seeking a refund. For a small business, a few chargebacks a month can have a significant impact. The average cost is between sixty pounds and sixty-five pounds per chargeback, and that is before you add the time spent dealing with queries, complaints, banks and providers. It quickly becomes a major issue for small businesses.”

Herring said customer discussions often need to move away from fear of fines and towards the immediate commercial effects of taking card details incorrectly over the phone. He added that one of the sharpest risks for a small firm is the possibility of losing access to merchant services if it fails to comply.

According to the executives, any business that accepts credit card payments by phone could fall within scope, regardless of size. They pointed to sectors including retail, hospitality, automotive services, florists, takeaways, garages, dentists and skip hire firms as examples of businesses that may still rely on informal payment handling.

Broad market

Savory said many firms still ask customers to read card numbers aloud, repeat them back or trust staff not to write them down. He argued that such habits remain common across the high street and in service businesses despite the risks.

He added that the impact of chargebacks and related costs can be greater for a small florist with two or three staff than for a large corporation.

That point underpins Gamma’s pitch to channel partners. Rather than treating PCI as a specialist issue limited to heavily regulated sectors, the company wants resellers to see it as a broader cross-sell opportunity within their existing unified communications customer base.

Herring said businesses that already buy communications services may be easier to approach on payment security because the supplier relationship is already in place. Savory added that this can help partners present themselves as trusted advisers rather than focusing only on price or contract renewal.

Product detail

The pair also described how Gamma’s iPECS-based PCI offer is structured. Herring said the company uses a per-user monthly pricing model, in contrast to rival offers that can include setup charges running into four figures as well as transaction fees.

He also described a LinkPay option for customers that prefer to send a payment link by SMS, email or WhatsApp instead of taking card details verbally during a call. The option is aimed at businesses such as builders’ merchants and garages, where payment may be made after a booking or service call.

For live telephone payments, Herring said the system uses a dedicated PCI trunk and a four-digit code to start a secure transaction. Keypad tones are stripped from the call data so they do not appear in recordings, while the agent sees only limited masked card information through a portal.

That matters for businesses that need to record calls for compliance or operational reasons. Herring said the system also injects silence into the call while card numbers are entered, preventing spoken digits from being captured if a customer reads them out from habit.

Savory said the system works with major payment service providers in the UK. Herring put the current total at thirteen or fourteen and said additional providers can be added where needed.

The two men repeatedly returned to the economics for smaller firms, framing the offer as a fixed monthly cost against the unpredictable cost of disputed payments and internal admin time. Savory said businesses across the high street, from florists and hairdressers to dentists, need services like this. He described it as a form of insurance that helps protect against chargebacks and fraud, supports compliance and reduces risk for a manageable fixed fee.