Wantage: Grove Business Park development attracts occupiers

NFU Mutual, Penman Consulting and Forensic Access have completed leases to take offices in the new 10,500 sq ft Aspect House development at Grove Business Park, Wantage.

NFU Mutual has chosen Grove Business Park for its new regional offices, Penman Consulting is relocating from Faringdon and Forensic Access having acquired another operating company is expanding from elsewhere on the Park.

Aspect House was the latest speculative development initiative at Grove Business Park to help attract a growing number of thriving local and national businesses. The new Grade A air-conditioned offices offer space comparable to the larger business parks around Oxfordshire at competitive rents and without commuting challenges.

"This was a bold move for us which has paid off," commented Richard Lyall, project director at Grove Business Park. "We fully believe that Wantage needs this quality of office space to attract such businesses, and the fact that we had this building fully committed before construction was complete was testament to this."

Penman Consulting, one of the tenants moving into Aspect House, commented ‘The new offices provide us with an opportunity to build a state of the art facility to bring our growing UK science, regulatory, and IT development teams together under one roof, gaining the benefits of the synergy it provides. The high-class IT infrastructure also allows us to build a hub for our operations in Brussels, Europe, India and the US, to bring the company together.’

Aspect House is part of a development programme at Grove Business Park, set to deliver 220,000 sq ft of new buildings doubling the floor area on the 32-acre Park. The next development to be constructed starts on site this month, comprising 10 mid-tech and industrial units to lease. These properties in the new GBP1 development will be ready for occupation in summer 2019. Over 30% have already been contracted for occupation before construction has begun.

Additional industrial and office developments are in the pipeline to fulfil pent-up occupier demand. This interest is both from businesses in the Wantage area wishing to upgrade their buildings, but also new businesses seeing the opportunity for recruitment in Wantage associated with the extensive new housing development locally.

"We plan to build at least 80,000 sq ft of new offices and industrial units during 2018 and 2019, which is really unprecedented for Wantage," added Lyall. "Added to this we have ongoing pre-let discussions with companies considering large design-and-build property solutions which would be very exciting for the area."