Gloucestershire’s High Growth Sectors

Secure technologies and digital

Gloucestershire is a nationally significant centre for security and resilience innovation, anchored by GCHQ’s headquarters in Cheltenham and its significant workforce of mathematicians, linguists, analysts and technical staff; and complemented by a dense cluster of specialist cyber-SMEs.

Gloucestershire’s capabilities extend beyond cyber to include AI, quantum, climate, biosecurity, and human resilience. These strengths connect directly into the South West’s wider arc of innovation, including the Isambard-AI supercomputer in Bristol and the National Quantum Computing Centre in Oxfordshire.

Local partnerships are central to this growth. CyNam, Cheltenham’s cyber network, has expanded from 50 to over 7,000 members in just a decade, acting as a vital convenor for industry, academia, and early-stage innovators. Alongside partners like Hub8 and Plexal, Gloucestershire is fostering a dynamic environment for scaling ideas and attracting investment.

The key challenge is matching this momentum with a robust, inclusive talent pipeline.

Demand in digital and security-related roles continues to outstrip supply. Golden Valley is addressing this through a coordinated approach to aptitude testing, teacher CPD, work readiness, and mid-life retraining, helping to ensure these opportunities are open to all communities, and not just those with existing specialist skills.

Golden Valley is a £1bn employment-led technology cluster aligned with the UK’s National Science and Technology Strategy in Gloucestershire. Positioned immediately adjacent to GCHQ in Cheltenham, the scheme will deliver over 1 million sq. ft of commercial space, 3,700 homes, and 12,000 new jobs; specialist developer HBD is leading the development, in partnership with Cheltenham Borough Council.

More than a cyber district, Golden Valley reframes security as a foundational principle for all sectors, from infrastructure and food supply to AI and national resilience. The project is already drawing significant national and international interest, including companies choosing it as their UK base.

The flagship 160,000 sq. ft National Cyber Innovation Centre is the first building to come forward, targeting Net Zero and NABERS 5.5 Star standards. It will co-locate startups, government, academia, and major industry in a high-trust environment, and has already attracted a significant proportion of high capability investment interest, including a major government commitment.

Golden Valley also tackles the national digital skills gap through a dedicated Skills and Talent Hub, a partnership between Gloucestershire County Council, the University of Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire College, and industry. The programme spans school coding clubs, mid-career retraining, aptitude spotting, and innovative security “clearance-on-learning” pilots.

Community benefit is central. Golden Valley’s social value strategy is rooted in inclusion, education, and wellbeing, ensuring that innovation enhances local lives through investment in green space, health, and opportunity.

Looking ahead, Golden Valley embodies an emerging industrial shift, away from pure automation, and towards one that champions human-tech collaboration, sustainability, and the transformation of how people engage with emerging technologies. Once complete, Golden Valley will be a globally recognised national asset for the UK - a secure, sustainable place where the UK’s most forward-looking organisations come together to solve tomorrow’s security challenges and build the workforce to match.

Agri-tech

With two world-renowned agricultural universities, Hartpury University and the Royal Agricultural University, the county is a leading light for the future of agriculture, with a significant advantage in technology, cyber security and engineering and sensor technologies. These facilities can provide the research capabilities to support future food security, regenerative agriculture, and sustainable land management alongside nature conservation and recovery.

The push for technology adoption in the Agri-Tech sector has positioned Gloucestershire at the intersection of cyber and digital innovation and the evolution of advanced engineering. Productive yield and testbed digital innovation facilities are offering real world demonstrable results and knowledge exchange for farmers.

This progress is key to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of future food systems in the face of rapid geopolitical shifts and climate change. It also supports the shift toward regenerative agriculture, where Agri-Tech plays a key role in improving environmental outcomes and ensuring long-term sustainability. This approach is essential for unlocking the economic potential of nature-based investment and advancing the county’s broader commitment to ecological recovery.

Gloucestershire’s strategic location, combined with its network of cutting-edge research and testing facilities, provides a significant competitive advantage for the development of convergent technologies across multiple industry sectors. The region’s strong international research partnerships and excellence in higher education create a hub of local expertise for farmers, while also positioning Gloucestershire as an attractive destination for global investment and collaboration among academics, cyber entrepreneurs, and researchers.

Hartpury University and College’s Digital Innovation Farm and collaborative working and test space in the Tech Box Park provides a cutting-edge demonstration and testbed research platform facility in the northwest of the county. It enables real-world trials of robotics, AI, and sensor technologies to improve productivity and sustainability in farming. The facility supports Gloucestershire’s ambition to lead in regenerative agriculture and food security, blending tradition with cutting-edge technology.

In Cirencester, Royal Agricultural University’s vision to establish an ambitious £100m Innovation Village on a 29-acre site, is placing them at the heart of global thinking and research on sustainable land use and farming.  The RAU has already established the innovative Farm 491 facility as a high value inward investment and cluster of land use innovation and agri-tech entrepreneurs. By collaborating seamlessly with its Growth Hub facility for rural, technology and other small enterprises, it is a further demonstration that innovation ambition is driving cutting edge change in both rural and urban areas across the county and the country.

Advanced engineering and aerospace

Gloucestershire has been at the heart of the national aviation and aerospace industry for over one hundred years. Britain’s first turbojet engine developed by Sir Frank Whittle, and the famous aircraft the Gloster Pioneer, marked the beginning of the county’s reputation for flight innovation and precision engineering.

Innovation is also supported by access to two key aviation centres: Gloucestershire Airport and Cotswold Airport. The latter is the largest privately owned aviation airport in Europe and is renowned as a centre for low carbon aerospace research and development innovation.

Industry leaders, including Safran, GE Aerospace, Dowty Propellers, Ultra, and Moog underpin the county as a global hub for aerospace and advanced manufacturing, defence and precision engineering. With a manufacturing workforce of 33,000 (BRES, 2023) and representing over £3.5bn locally (2023), the county’s contribution to defence and security to these industries with high value specialisms in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul and precision components, not only support the high value jobs in production and knowledge-intensive industries.  

Further frontier industry growth opportunities across the county include novel materials, and robotics capabilities, and space industry manufacturing, with over 100 new jobs created in Gloucester by new investor and ultra lightweighting composites disrupter, iCOMAT.

Renishaw’s global engineering design and research excellence and production expertise in precision measurement and spectroscopy, continue to advance international advancement in life sciences and medical advancement engineering, offering cutting edge technological developments to diverse industries across the world.

Further innovations include the world’s first underwater living research project with the DEEP campus, a £100m+ marine engineering and academic collaborative investment at Tidenham in the Forest of Dean. The goal to increase understanding and preservation of the planet’s deep-water environments, with the aim of humans being able to live, explore and understand the oceans whilst living underwater.

Highly specialised clusters of Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing major and high growth industries exist across the county, with Tewkesbury borough, a particularly pivotal location for innovation, advanced manufacturing and defence. The sector alone represents over 33% of Tewkesbury borough’s GVA.

Gloucestershire is highly aligned and recognised within the frontier industries within the Modern Industrial Strategy Sector Plans, and Defence Industrial Strategy. These have identified the county as a significant enabling cluster to the supporting future innovation within these associated industry developments.

A commissioned review led by Tewkesbury Borough Council in 2025 highlighted the importance of deepening engagement with the sector to further build on strategic partnerships with innovation and skills providers and expand grow-on premises for the sector. It outlines the aspiration to provide a focus and increase access to cutting-edge technologies in response to local growth requirements. Work across the Catapult network, the National Composite Centre, Innovate UK, the West of England Forum, with local authorities, industry groups and academia as well as local employment and skills partners will continue to support this. 

Energy transition and low carbon innovation

As the UK energy market continues to transition to Net Zero, Gloucestershire is superbly positioned to build on our leading commitments to Climate Change and the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda for business and industries, enhanced by its existing strengths in renewable innovation and a strong commitment to grassroot neighbourhood and community-led initiatives, across the broader spectrum of domestic retrofit, SME energy efficiency investment and measures, through to the decarbonisation of larger industries and energy generation.

The broader energy transition is also impacting on the way in which grid connections support local housing markets and strategic and local planning delivery.  Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) forms part of the new regional and energy strategic planning discussions, Gloucestershire is working proactively to engage with the grid and distribution network/system operators to address and respond to emerging strategic planning and infrastructure, economic and climate change objectives in response to the Government’s Clean Power Plan 2030 and ensure strategic investment into Gloucestershire’s energy grid. Next steps in this journey will also focus on local energy stakeholder engagement and appropriate data gathering to enable an investment prospectus to support our strategic objectives under Climate Leadership Gloucestershire.

People, planet and profit are not mutually exclusive and many of our businesses and new investors are already on significant journeys investing in energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emission reductions from micros and SMEs to the largest foreign direct investors as they respond to consumer behaviours, energy prices and global investment capital requirements.  Gloucestershire’s Growth Hub plays a vital role in helping us to achieve environmentally friendly productivity gains, energy resource efficiency and social value in response to significant levels of demand for advice and guidance.

Sustainable energy supply experts and advocates, such as Ecotricity, actively demonstrate applied innovation and sustainable financial investments, including the development of the world’s first eco-stadium, Forest Green Rovers. The planned eco-stadium will showcase how sport can drive environmental change. The club is a beacon of Gloucestershire’s low-carbon leadership and community engagement, proving that sustainability and ambition go hand in hand.

Gloucestershire is also at the forefront of the emerging green hydrogen ecosystem, with local industry pioneers such as Progressive Energy, Kiwa Energy, and ZeroAvia shaping impactful hydrogen energy projects.

Wild Hydrogen, a green tech start-up, is actively researching and developing carbon-negative hydrogen from biogenic materials and captured carbon dioxide for hard-to-abate sectors like construction, steel production, shipping, and farming, showcasing the county's leadership in cutting-edge green technologies.

We will build on existing links and forge new relationships between industry, the public sector, education and communities to showcase learning and innovation at all stages of the energy transition, within the growth of the circular economy, both domestically and for industry, and in the renewables journey.

Our commitment and drive towards net zero, while advocating key principles for a regenerative, environmentally aware and circular economy approach will act as a ‘golden thread’, for all industries including those in our high productivity sectors. This will ensure we balance the strategic need for prosperity and productivity to support our local communities with well paid jobs and with the pressures and need for balance with our highly valued environment and natural assets and capital.

Gloucestershire’s devolution journey

Devolution offers a transformative opportunity for Gloucestershire to unlock targeted funding and gain greater local control over how we address long-standing challenges to economic growth. One of the most pressing issues we face is deprivation, which continues to affect communities across the county, most notably in rural areas such as the Forest of Dean.

While there is strong commitment across agencies to work collaboratively to tackle inequality, progress is often hindered by the financial constraints facing local government. A devolution deal would enable us to design and deliver tailored interventions that reflect local priorities, supported by long-term, place-based investment. This would allow us to move beyond fragmented and short-term funding models, and instead take a more strategic, joined-up approach across health, housing, education, and employment. By committing to be responsive to refreshing the Local Growth Plan with the devolution agreement, we can better coordinate resources and drive meaningful, sustained change where it’s needed most.

There are two key delivery timescales to consider as part of this journey: before and after a devolution deal is agreed. There will be a requirement to refresh the Local Growth Plan on this journey to ensure it is fully aligned with the devolution agreement when agreed with government and ahead of the new local authority arrangements being implemented in Spring 2028.

Stage 1 – December 2025 to Summer 2026

·       Progress with delivery of the short-term Local Growth Plan Action Plan delivery activities – this will be ongoing until Spring 2028.

·       Government responds to Gloucestershire’s Local Government Reorganisation and Devolution submission. This response may provide clarity on what is expected within a formal Local Growth Plan as part of the devolution arrangements.

Stage 2 – Autumn 2026 to Spring 2027

·       Informed by Government’s devolution timetable, refresh Local Growth Plan. This will include detailed activities ahead of the unitary authority(ies) being formed.

Stage 3 – Spring 2027 to Spring 2028

·       Hold elections for new local authority arrangements.

·       Transfer activities to new local authority arrangements. 

·       Agree refreshed Local Growth Plan reviewing delivery priorities. It is assumed that this process will include additional stakeholder engagement and appropriate updates to the existing local evidence base.

Stage 4 – Spring 2028 to Spring 2038

·       New local authority arrangements commence.

·       Advance devolution agreement and new combined authority arrangements.

·       Commence delivery of economic activities linked to new funding arrangements agreed through local government reorganisation and future local devolution deal.

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