Your business future in the Regency heart of Gloucestershire
Cheltenham, with its striking Regency architecture, vibrant entertainment scene, international festivals and world-famous racecourse lies at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment in the heart of Gloucestershire. Conveniently close to London (two hours), Oxford, Bristol and Birmingham, this spa town offers a vast amount to businesses and their employees.
A Regency welcome for your business
Conveniently located off Junctions 10, 11 and 11a of the M5, Cheltenham offers the infrastructure advantages of a progressive and growing urban environment with proximity to some of the UK’s most beautiful scenery. Already a base for international businesses including Spirax Sarco, GE Aviation, Kraft Foods, Vertex, Ultra Electronics, Kohler Mira and many others (as well as the government GCHQ facility), Cheltenham offers a unique combination of culture, transport links, higher and further education and a diverse, skilled workforce.
With its strong communications, quality of work and leisure life and a number of established industrial/commercial estates, Cheltenham offers a welcoming environment for large and small businesses seeking a strategic relocation or successful start-up.
The facilities your business needs to thrive
Of many established business locations, Cheltenham’s largest is Kingsditch (home to firms such as Ultra Electronics, PDC Krone and Vibixa), conveniently located with excellent access to the M5 motorway, A4019 and nearby Gloucester. Other estates include Kingsmead, Tewkesbury Road, Mead Road and Arle Court, home to GE Aviation. It’s a testimony to their popularity that Cheltenham’s estates enjoy high occupancy rates – while still offering many inward investment opportunities.
Long associated with fine office accommodation, much of Cheltenham’s office stock is in prestige Regency properties or modern office facilities close to the town centre. These include the landmark Eagle Tower, Cheltenham’s largest office development, which is visible from all around Cheltenham and now houses numerous professional, service and consultancy businesses. More new office accommodation is planned at various edge-of-town locations.
Wonderful for living and working
For living and working, Cheltenham offers you and your staff a unique combination of style and sophisticated business efficiency. With its stunning location, high quality housing and some of the UK’s finest shopping (including the renowned Promenade and the new town centre Brewery development), Cheltenham is an important regional, national and international centre serving an extensive catchment in Gloucestershire as well as the South Midlands.
As with all Gloucestershire’s urban areas, escape to the countryside is easy when you’re based in Cheltenham. That’s if you want to leave town at all, because Cheltenham, boasting the hottest nightlife between Birmingham and Bristol, is richly blessed with a huge selection of stylish restaurants, bistros, coffee bars, pubs and nightclubs for all tastes and budgets!
As one of the region’s top cultural centres, Cheltenham boasts a great selection of theatres (including the popular Everyman and Playhouse), cinemas and other leisure facilities as well as an impressive calendar of international festivals – including the annual Cheltenham Festival of Literature and an international Jazz festival.
And then, of course there’s Cheltenham’s famous racecourse, the home of the annual Gold Cup as well as regular National Hunt meetings. And if cricket is your personal or corporate ‘thing’, you’ll enjoy the world’s longest running cricket festival – hosted here by Gloucestershire County Cricket Club.
Location, accessibility, hotels and conferencing
When you need to leave town on business, the M5 motorway is just minutes away, with other excellent road communications across the Cotswolds and into the Forest of Dean and Wales. For those who prefer rail, Cheltenham Spa station is conveniently positioned on the western side of the town with excellent national links. The town centre is also served by several efficient Park and Ride schemes.
For air travel, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff and Heathrow airports are all between one and two hours’ motorway drive away. And Gloucestershire Airport is on the edge of town for your business aviation needs.
And as befits such an established business centre, Cheltenham offers numerous conference and meeting facilities, ranging from stylish central or suburban hotels to dedicated meeting facilities such as the superb 2000-seat Centaur venue at Cheltenham racecourse.
Education, skills and training on hand
Cheltenham has long enjoyed an excellent international reputation for its schools (including the famous Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Cheltenham College). Add to this the fact that Gloucestershire College (Gloucestershire’s largest further education college) and several University of Gloucestershire campuses (including the Gloucestershire Business School) are in the town and you’ll start to appreciate Cheltenham’s commitment to supporting the education of your future skilled workforce.
Economic profile
Population: 111,700 (2005) Source: ONS (Nomis) mid-2006 population estimates
Employment Rate: 56,200 Rate: 82% July 2006-June 2007 (Source: Annual Population Survey ONS Crown Copyright Reserved)
Unemployment Rate: 2.1% February 2008 (Source: Claimant count: % of resident working age population ONS Crown Copyright Reserved)
Housing allocation 2006-2026: 8,500 (Source: Draft Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West)
Need more information about relocation to Cheltenham? Contact Invest in Gloucestershire now…