Cirencester Growth Hub celebrates its first anniversary

Published by

Nicky Godding

In July last year, Cirencester Growth Hub opened to help drive economic growth in the town and wider Gloucestershire, is celebrating its first birthday.

Funded by a £1.25m grant from the GFirst Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and by the Royal Agricultural University, it opened last July in purpose-built premises at the RAU, becoming the latest addition to the Gloucestershire Growth Hub network.

Cirencester Growth Hub’s mission is to support new and growing Gloucestershire-based businesses through a mixture of free advice and guidance, workshops and events. Plus the venue offers pay-as-you-go membership for use of the co-working space, and meeting room hire.

Since it has opened the management team have welcomed more than 2,500 visitors, offered personalised business support to more than 110 local businesses and hosted more than 30 workshops and 10 networking events.

And more than 16,500 coffees have fuelled this hard work, courtesy of Stroud’s Golden Sheep coffee, which keeps Growth Hub visitors going.

Yesim Nicholson, Cirencester Growth Hub manager, said: “It’s been an amazing first year. The response has been fantastic and we know, from what they tell us, that we are making a big difference to the local business community. But we’re not complacent; there are many more businesses out there who could benefit from the free support we offer, so we would urge them to get in touch and see how, together, we can help build on the business success of Cirencester and the surrounding area.”

To mark its birthday, the Cirencester Growth Hub is letting its three meeting rooms for free, for the whole month of August. Offering an airy and flexible space for training, workshops or off-site meetings, the rooms all come with complimentary parking, wifi, tea and coffee.

There are some Ts&Cs: the offer is for August only, for one full day (9am-5pm) per company and must be booked via telephone - 01285 889850.

Also in August, Cirencester Growth Hub will be running a range of workshops and one-to-one advice sessions, including Google’s Digital Garage, back by popular demand on August 14, and marketing one-to-ones on August 19 and 20.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.