Hub8 is now open

Published by

Kirsty Muir

Bruce Gregory, Peter Harrison and Jason Pritchard, are Directors of Hub8 and have designed, financed and now operate the initiative. They are also behind the Workshop Cheltenham project which will be home to Cheltenham’s Growth Hub (launching in late 2020).

Hub8 is a workspace innovation facility exclusively dedicated to supporting and harnessing government, academic and private sector expertise within the cyber tech community. Its mission is to curate the emergence of cyber tech businesses of the future and develop the UK’s cyber tech capabilities with Gloucestershire as its focal point.

Hub8 has been designed and will be delivered in close partnership with CyNam (Cyber Cheltenham), a locally based community interest company whose network acts as a platform for ideas and collaboration among the cyber tech community. CyNam hosts the UK’s best-attended regular cluster events that bring together cyber-tech SMEs, enterprise technology companies, academia, local and central government departments as well as the investment community and wider supporting industries to help enable Gloucestershire to fulfil its potential as a globally recognised hub of cyber tech innovation and excellence. A proportion of revenue generated by Hub8 will be received by CyNam to allow it to deliver an enhanced programme of activities and business support for the cyber tech community.

The principal objectives of Hub8 are to:

provide businesses with access to affordable innovative workspace, talent, business support, customers and funding;
curate the development of talent and know-how within the local cyber community;
support the GCHQ supply chain;
create an environment in which genuine innovation can result in meaningful advances in cyber security;
stimulate economic activity in the town and region;
generate positive and sustainable employment impacts, including by retaining existing and attracting new talent to the town;
actively engage with and enthuse the next generation of talent through partnerships with local academia including the University of Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire College;
incubate emerging cyber security businesses for transition in due course to Cyber Central at West Cheltenham;
serve as a ‘proof of concept’ for an enhanced cyber innovation centre as a ‘gateway’ project at Cyber Central; and
help establish Cheltenham and Gloucestershire as the UK’s foremost cyber security ‘cluster’.

Hub8 aligns with the SEP/LIS:

business environment – attracting and retaining successful businesses in high value sectors;
skills – providing and nurturing the next generation of talented, highly employable and productive individuals to meet the needs of local business, especially those in sectors with high growth potential;
alignment with UK Industrial Strategy – Ideas: encouraging the UK to be the world’s most innovative economy; Business environment: guaranteeing the best place to start and grow a business;
playing to our strengths, our cyber specialism;
realising Gloucestershire’s potential of having a cyber security sector of national and global significance;
promote cross LEP working within key sectors, particularly cyber;
enable growth in knowledge-intensive services;
capitalise on our entrepreneurial culture;
provide a unique environment to help reverse the stagnation in productivity;
develop better links between education and business, and attracting and retaining our talented young people; and
exploit the export potential of our SMEs.