St. Modwen to deliver major part of Cheltenham's Golden Valley development

Published by

Nicky Godding

Developer St. Modwen has been selected by Midlands Land Portfolio, the property development arm of Severn Trent, as its development partner for a 154-acre site to the west of Cheltenham as part of a wider mixed-use development known as The Golden Valley Development.

Covering more than 200 hectares of land and delivering Cyber Central, the UK’s first campus built around cyber technology, the Golden Valley Development will deliver significant employment and housing opportunities together with open space and other community facilities.

The site is adjacent to the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Cyber Security Centre and forms part of a key strategic allocation within the Joint Core Strategy. It includes the delivery of approximately 3,000 new homes, a mixed-use Cyber Central Cluster bringing together leading cyber businesses and innovators alongside academic facilities dedicated to cyber and technologies, and significant infrastructure improvements.

A planning application for the development could be brought forward as early as this year and will include new homes as well as formal and informal green space and community assets that will complement the development of the cyber-related employment uses.

The development is one of the most significant residential opportunities in the South West.

Guy Gusterson, Managing Director of strategic land & regeneration at St. Modwen, said: “The West Cheltenham development presents a unique opportunity to shape and deliver a new community next to a globally recognised hub for cyber security. The development team and I are excited to work in partnership with MLPL on this regionally significant development which will deliver much-needed housing as well as jobs."

As well as working closely with MLPL, St. Modwen will collaborate with the other landowners that make up the allocation and key stakeholders, including Cheltenham Borough Council and Tewkesbury Borough Council.

Julie Rossiter, Severn Trent's Head of Property Development added: “We are confident that by bringing St. Modwen’s expertise to this scheme that together, alongside the other major stakeholders involved, we will help to realise the vision for the Golden Valley Development. We at Severn Trent are particularly pleased that we are able to recycle our redundant land assets for the benefit of the communities in which we operate.”

Severn Trent and Cheltenham Borough Council are the principal landowners controlling the majority of the wider 200 hectare Golden Valley Development site.

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.