Gloucester: The inside story of a city's regeneration
While some will know the headlines of the last few years telling the tale of Gloucester's regeneration, until now no one has told the inside story of how the city came from nowhere to where it's at.
Dear reader,
We hope you had a great weekend. Welcome to the first edition of The Raikes Journal of the week.
As we signed off on Friday we unlocked what would have been a members’ only edition to reveal our latest Founding Partner, Willans LLP.
The article was a big interview with Bridget Redmond, managing partner of Cheltenham headquartered solicitors, which has backed us to make possible this community interest company dedicated to supporting businesses, charities and education and training providers.
We cannot thank the firm enough.
For an annual fee amounting to £2.30 a week you took will be able to see beyond the paywalls that go onto all our stories after two weeks, and often sit across out Thursday and Friday edition as well as our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series – which tracks the fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover. Please do think about it.
We hope you enjoy the edition.
Please do send us your story ideas to andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk. Or telephone 07956 926061.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux, Willans LLP and Gloucestershire College, and more partners will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support from all of you is invaluable! For commercial opportunities visit our About us page or email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Why today’s main story?
For those looking to redevelop their towns and cities, who cannot attract a developer for love nor money, and think there is simply no hope - this story is a wakeup call.
Go back 30 years and Gloucester’s reputation was in tatters, its political landscape had scared off any potential investors and the spectre of Fred West was only just beginning to haunt the city, giving it a world-wide profile for all the wrong reasons.
And then something happened that today still sees cranes on the skyline and investment to the tune of millions of pounds transforming the city.
What hasn’t happened, until now, is for anyone to tell the inside story. This Friday a book – which may well just provide a blueprint for those others towns and cities looking for change – is about to be launched in Gloucester.
At the heart of the politics, around the table at the business meetings, those chats with developers, and helping convince many the city was worth believing in, was its author. You can find out more below.
Diversity: Does your business really want it?
Today we introduce you to a new writer for The Raikes Journal’s Expert Insight section. Simon Merrell - who supports organisations, teams, groups and individuals to bring about change - tackles the topic of diversity. It’s become a sought-after goal as organisations have begun to understand the potential benefits. But, as the article points out, it may well require a little forethought to truly harness the positives - as well as manage your expectations of it as some kind of panacea. Simon has worked with everyone from small and medium-sized firm to some of the UK’s biggest company’s to help them develop their skills and change their culture. He lives in Gloucestershire, is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the founder of Merrell People. Read the article on our Expert Insight page here.
Want to become an expert writers? Email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Your Raikes’ briefing
🎉 It was a phrase coined by the British billionaire John Whittaker, chairman of Peel Group. Asked why his business was investing millions in Gloucester to create the Quays designer outlet centre, when no one else would invest in the city, he replied “I believe in Gloucester”. That quote resonates still and has become both mantra and moniker for Gloucester BID, whose annual Believe in Gloucester awards celebrate the city. Those awards are now open to entries across 15 different categories. Find out more here.
🎁 Last year the CCP charity’s Summer Activity Bags campaign gathered toys, games, activities to gift to 130 families across its patch to support them through the summer holidays. This year it's at it again, and is hoping generous donations will allow them to do the same for 150 families. Find out how you can help here.
🏉 Yet another former Hartpury student has been summoned for international rugby duty. Current Gloucester-Hartpury player Mia Venner has been called up to the Red Roses squad training squad for the 2024 Six Nations. She actually made her senior England debut against Wales in the 2020 Women’s Six Nationals at the age of 17. Vennere joins Gloucester-Hartpury team mates Zoe Aldcroft, Sarah Beckett, Mackenzie Carson, Alex Matthews, Maud Muir, Tatyana Heard, Natasha 'Mo' Hunt and Emma Sing. Read more here.
🏘️ It’s crunch week for the developers asking for permission to build 47 homes in Milkwall, a village near Coleford in the Forest of Dean and for the 70 residents opposing the proposal. K & D James & Martin will find out if it has permission from Coleford Town Council for the scheme, which covers 1.59 hectares and a mixture of detaches and semi-detached houses. You can read the story here.
🏗️ Cirencester Chamber of Trade is helping to promote this on its social media, but it’s actually the Cotswold District Council that is seeking someone to invest in the renovation of the Old Station building in the town – designed by British engineering legend Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The local authority hopes it can find someone to breathe new life into the Grade II listed former station, which first opened its doors in 1841 and transferred into the Council’s ownership in 1968. Read more here.
Our chosen charity: ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity
If you are a young person with ADHD, a parent, carer, friend of a young person with ADHD, Wednesday this week promises to be a momentous day.
A three-year, fully-funded programme of support for organisations in Gloucestershire to help them better support those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is due to be launched by the ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity.
It will aim to improve the understanding of neurodiversity and how it impacts individuals, friends, sibling and families, to enhance attendance and attainment in education, improve mental health and wellbeing for neurodivergent young people and increase levels of skills and knowledge to support young people’s participation in activities.
We covered off the heartbreaking and inspirational story of just how this programme came to the county in February, and the incredible work done by Jane Roberts since to make it happen. You can read it here. The launch is due to take place at the Playhouse Theatre, Cheltenham, from 9.30am to 3pm. Email stephen.ortega@adhdfoundation.org.uk to find out more.
Believing in Gloucester: The inside story of a city's regeneration
It may not go down in history quite like the time Richard II decamped Parliament there in 1378, or when Henry III and Anne Boleyn slept over in 1535, but a rather special gathering is due to take place in Gloucester Cathedral’s Parliament Room this week revealing some secrets behind the city’s regeneration.
By Andrew Merrell.
On Friday many of those who have held tight the secrets of Gloucester of the last 30 years will gather in a little-known room beside the Cathedral to see how much of what they know has been revealed by a new book telling a very special story – a story that has yet to end.
Its author is not expecting a best-seller. For him, the book is a document of a quarter of a century charting a remarkable journey against the odds, of how a city downtrodden, forgotten, badly beaten and given up on by many, dragged itself out of the mire and began a journey of regeneration that continues to this day.
It is a true story that begins in the dark days of Fred West and the Cromwell Street murders and the damning prose of national commentators that followed, declaring the city home to “small town, shaven-headed ugliness”, “lethargy and seedy crime”, with a “decayed medieval city centre” where “the packaging of junk food-flutters in the breeze”.
Local politics, in-fighting, and collapsed deals had destroyed hope and left Gloucester abandoned and forgotten as other parts of the country reinvented themselves through regeneration, kept their young and talented folk, and moved forward.
This is a story that charts how, one by one, an unlikely and eclectic bunch of individuals came together, and against what almost any sensible person at the time would have thought possible – they changed the city’s landscape, helped it win back its self-respect, its soul, and led to transformative multi-million pound deals.
“The book is something I had thought about doing and when my time at Gloucester City Council came to an end. It has taken four years to get to where we are now,” said Paul James, who spoke to Raikes at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business School as GFirst LEP, which has also become part of Gloucester’s journey, prepared to wrap up its own impressive story.
James born and bred in the city, is more than the author of Believing in Gloucester: The inside story of a city’s regeneration. It might be hard to tell from reading it, but he knows so much about the story not just because of diligent research and more than 100 interviews, but because he was in most of the meetings, witnessed the arguments, saw the blood on the carpet and was much more part of the saga than his book suggests. He was a key player.
All those early meetings where local politicians went head to head with the ‘outsiders’ brought in to tow the city out of the mud, all those conversations that needed political contacts, when someone was needed to explain things in a language that got people around the table, where someone was needed who could speak calmly and with a deep love of the city in which they were born, this was often James.
It seems he was the team’s political fixer in local government, its matchmaker, steady hand, and catalyst who helped this group achieve the miracle of bleeding confidence back into Gloucester.
And it is perhaps for this reason that although the book, incredibly detailed in its history of how Gloucester came to be at the cusp of the tipping point it is today, is full driven by passion and an enthusiasm not for what has gone – but for what the future holds.
Greg Smith was the principal and chief executive of Gloucestershire College when the story began and also became the chairman of the Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration Company, the Government funded group set up to tackle Gloucester’s malaise.
For Smith, it is not a simple story of choosing the right people for the right roles from the off. That was a process that required considerable work on its own, and happened as the GHURC worked to change the city from one of political stalemate to possibilities and partnerships.
Smith: “Gloucester City Council was pretty hopeless at the time. There was no investment, no confidence.”
It was the then MP, Parmjit Dhanda, who convinced Downing Street to establish the GHURC and to bring in Chris Oldershaw to help run it – a man who had been instrumental in helping with the regeneration of Newcastle.
But first there was the work that needed to be done to get everyone working together.
Ian Mean, the then editor of The Citizen, Gloucester’s daily newspaper of the time, was one of those to join the board from the start, and outlined the scale of early challenges.
“The first meeting we had of the GHURC there were 22 councillors involved. One of them was Paul. I think a lot of the councillors saw this as an opportunity for the council. It was not. It was about getting things moving in the city.
“At the time, developers avoided the city like the plague. There had been a huge, failed development at Blackfriars before 2001. To try to get investors to come to Gloucester was virtually impossible.”
Smith added: “Paul did so much work behind the scenes to fix things. He was very understated, but very influential. He worked away with no ego.
“He put the future of Gloucester over and above his own political career. He was reasonable, decent, quietly spoken and he fixed things.”
Creating a working team was crucial to the GHURC being able to open talks with The Peel Group, the Manchester-based development giant that became convinced enough to see serious potential in the city. So much so, its boss, John Whittaker, said the words no one of his stature had muttered in years....
“I believe in Gloucester,” declared Whittaker, a phrase that echoes in the city still in the form of Gloucester BID’s annual Believe in Gloucester Awards, which celebrate the city.
Whittaker was good to his word. When Peel opened its outlet centre in 2009 it was reported to represent a £248 million investment.
For James, it was also an astonishing journey for someone who was elected onto the city council in 1996, aged just 22, one of just two Conservative councillors in a Labour stronghold where his own party played third fiddle to the Liberal Democrats.
A swing in political power suddenly saw him council leader by 2002 and the man with responsibility for regeneration. It was a role the young politician, still in his twenties, would make his own over the next two decades. But you won’t find much of that in the book either.
Peel was not the only developer who has transformed the Quays. Adrian Goodall is the face of Rokeby Merchant Developments, the business which has built the waterside Premier Inn hotel and renovated the old, listed Docks buildings into accommodation.
“It was Paul who talked to us, who got us interested, who encouraged us this was a council we could work with,” said Goodall.
The company still has designs on transforming the former Downings Malthouse is expected to start work on a landmark tower block of apartments at the Quays in September 2024, despite the immense challenges thrown in its way over the years.
“Someone did call us the unluckiest developer,” joked Goodall, referring to the catalogue of disasters outside his control that have beset the firm’s plans – from the fire at the former Provender Mill at Bakers Quay in 2015, which burned the building to the ground, flooding, the financial crash and the economic downturns.
“But it is because of him (James) we are still committed,” said Goodall.
Although James left the city council in 2020 and moved to Cotswold District Council, he remains a city resident and he might not be prone to shouting about himself, but the legacy he was part of creating lives on.
Under the new leadership, of Richard Cook, the city council has forged ahead with ambitious £100 million-plus redevelopment of King’s Square, for so long a stumbling block in the regeneration of the other end of Gloucester to the Docks, and Quays and one which James worked tirelessly to help set up.
Esther Croft is now director of sustainable communities, Salamanca Group, but was development director for Reef Group until recently – the developer appointed by the council to create its vision of The Forum.
“Paul’s book, Believing in Gloucester, is a testimony to just how many talented and dedicated people it takes to make regeneration a reality.
“What was noticeably absent throughout however, was the vital role Paul provided in his tenure as leader of the council.
“Investment in real estate is only possible where there is certainty of return and Paul’s vision and commitment to Gloucester over such a long period of time provided that reassurance to the market that the risk was worth it.
“It was a pleasure to work with him on so many inspiring projects.”
Critics of the speed and direction of travel of the city still remain, with those voices pointing to the middle of the city as the missing link.
James does not shy away from this in his book, and underlines how the GHURC’s dreams of extending its work into the centre of Gloucester were cut short by its own demise, and of the battle that remains to get that work done.
But for others, like Goodall, the two bookends of the waterfront and King’s Square are the catalysts that will make everything else happen and that momentum remains, as does a significant legacy – that the impression that Gloucester is a city investors and developers can do business.
There is Government Levelling Up cash coming, of course, and proposals on the table like Marksteen Adamson’s Pheonix Project, for The Fleece Hotel and the Longsmith Street Car park, and Rich Palmer’s proposals for the former Chambers pub off King’s Square, even if the big money from the private is currently lacking.
It’s not quite a happy ending some books get, but when it all started so bleakly all those years ago, it’s hard not to conclude those who played there part managed to create a pretty good story in the time they had. And that, of course, includes James himself.
You can find the book for sale on Amazon. The launch is due to take place on Friday 12 April at 7pm at the Parliament Rooms, Gloucester Catheral.
A couple of diary dates
Thursday
🚜 Navigating Change and Business Growth. Hartpury Digital Innovation Farm is due to stage this event from 10am to 1pm. If you are a business leader this is for you, It will explore the common challenges business leaders face when they blaze a trail or start something new. Delivered by Maurice McCartney founder of Fresh Management Solutions Ltd. To find out more click here.
Friday
🍞 🥕 🧀 🍰 In case you had forgotten - Gloucester Farmers Market is every Friday on The Cross in the middle of the city.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our Founding Partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux, Willans LLP solicitors and Gloucestershire College, and more will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
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