Will 2026 be the year the Golden Valley Development begins?
Conceived almost 10 years ago, hailed as a “once in a lifetime” project, the team behind the £1blln Golden Valley Development is confident that 2026 will be the year spades finally go in the ground.
Dear readers,
A double-edged edition today. One story bringing home the stark reality facing the start of the new year for more than 100 staff at a Gloucestershire factory, after news broke it plans to close operations in the county.
And then there is the potentially fantastic news that the Golden Valley Development is facing its final planning hurdle before work can begin.
We’ve decided not to get caught up entirely in the fanfare following in the wake of the Golden Valley media release.
If it wasn’t such a thoroughly exciting project, and if we lived in a time when local media held councils to account, the amount of noise on social media and unchallenged press releases published about what is a project funded by public money would have been balanced out somewhat.
There are frustrations out there among more than a few about the progress of the scheme, and we know conversations have taken place about leadership and costs, but in a landscape where hope of lots of investment is a powerful force for keeping everyone in line, most do not want to go public and jinx it all.
And neither do we!
I hope your first full week of 2026 has gone well. Long may it continue.
As for the first story, my thoughts are with the staff at Invista.
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
Fears for 125 jobs as factory announces closure plans
Staff at a Gloucester factory on the site of the county’s historic former airport could be facing redundancy after the owners announced plans to move all work abroad to “strengthen” its position.
By Andrew Merrell.
One hundred and twenty five staff await to hear their fate after the owner of the factory they work for in Gloucester announced it was exploring plans to close the operation.
Brockworth-based Invista, owned by American giant Koch Industries, said if it went ahead with the plans it would move operations to its base in Kingston, Canada, and also be exploring sites in China.
The intention, according to the business, would be “to strengthen its global operating footprint and position the business for long-term competitiveness”.
Brook Vickery, INVISTA president and chief executive officer, said: “These proposals are not a reflection of their performance or commitment, but rather a response to today’s market environment and the need to align our operations with where we see long-term opportunity.
“Our top priority now is ensuring the safe, stable operation of our facilities as we work through the changes necessary to evaluate and, if approved, implement these proposals.”
Read the full story here: Fears for 125 jobs as factory announces closure plans.
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Briefing notes…
🏭 Members news: High profile advanced engineering firm appoints administrators: Back in 2018 the Gloucestershire-based co-founder of a county engineering firm was escorting Theresa May on a three-day trade visit to China. All seemed rosy with the fast-growing firm, which had also become a darling of the Alternative Investment Market. That founder and the face of the firm, Neil Ricketts, was also part of the successful Gloucestershire’s local enterprise partnership team at GFirst LEP. And then in 2023, Ricketts, then chief executive officer of Versarien plc, resigned. This week the Forest of Dean-headquartered business has appointed administrators.
👨💼👩🏿💼👩💼 New centre for 100 businesses officially opens in Gloucester: It’s enjoyed its fair share of hype in the build up to this moment, but a new business centre which hopes to be home to 100 businesses and host 500 staff is now officially live in Gloucester. Opening in The Forum, the city’s new flagship office, retail and leisure development, the centre has already attracted tenants.
⚡🏗️ 🏘️ Former EDF offices could be demolished to make way for up to 300 homes: Plans are afoot to redevelop EDF’s former site in Gloucester to make way for up to 300 homes and new offices, industrial units and warehouses. The French state-owned energy company, which relocated to Gloucester Business Park in 2021, is looking to turn its former offices at Barnett Way in Barnwood into homes and business use.
The weekend ahead…
Friday.
🏉 Gloucester Rugby play Edinburgh Rugby away from 8pm this evening.
🎸 Cinema. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere at The Roses, Tewkesbury. An “intimate, behind-the-scenes exploration of the creation of Bruce Springsteen’s stark 1982 masterpiece, Nebraska”. From 7.30pm.
Saturday.
⚽ Cheltenham Town play Championship side Leicester City in the third round of the FA Cup at home. KO is 12.15pm.
⚽ Forest Green Rovers FC play Ebbsfleet United away. KO 3pm.
⚽ Gloucester City FC play Marine away. KO 3pm.
Sunday.
📺 Gloucester History Festival Winter Warmer 2026 online festival continues through this weekend with more than 70 historians, broadcasters and top names. Tickets are £7 per event with a pass costing £32 for all 50 events.
Will 2026 be the year the Golden Valley Development begins?
Conceived almost 10 years ago, hailed as a “once in a lifetime” £1blln project, the team behind the Golden Valley Development is confident that 2026 will be the year spades finally go in the ground.
By Andrew Merrell.
“If you build it they will come,” as the widely misquoted version of the original line from the 1989 film Field of Dreams goes.
In Gloucestershire it’s happened the other way around. Many cyber and tech businesses have come, but they are still waiting for the “it” to be build while they hold up in the Hub8 MX building in central Cheltenham.
That “it” being the Golden Valley Development. But it now looks like one of the key final hurdles to that happening is about to be cleared.
This week we learned that the final detailed plans have been filed with Cheltenham Borough Council’s planning department, and bearing in mind the project is owned by the local authority’, it seems not unreasonable to see this step as a formality.
Despite the long wait, filled with endless social media posts reminding us what’s coming, the Golden Valley Development - a business and residential scheme on a 45-hectare site beside GCHQ - remains difficult not to get excited about.
Once described as significant enough to see Gloucestershire crowned the UK’s cyber capital, the message has changed over time - toning down the cyber element considerably – but it continues to compel.
Today the narrative is broader, its most recent release talking about “leveraging the region’s specialism in security technology, clustering expertise in fast-growing sectors such as AI, quantum technologies, defence tech and communications”.
That’s what the 160,000 square-foot IDEAS building planned for the centre of the scheme will apparently be for. If you want to explore it now, you can - albeit virtually, online.
Cheltenham Borough Council first acquired the site for the development in 2017 and since then £130 million of public money has been committed to the project.
In typically British fashion when it comes to major projects the need for more and more public money knows no bounds.
The borough named its ‘preferred development partner’ as the HBD X Factory partnership in July 2021 before HBD (part of Henry Boot) took overall control in 2022, submitting its outline planning application for the scheme in October 2023.
Contractors Bowmer + Kirkland were then appointed in September 2025 in readiness to deliver the project’s first phase. In between times those social media posts have continued without pause.
All of which makes it a near 10-year journey to this point.
For some, the unending publicity with little progress on the ground was in danger of starting to sound a little like hyperbole.
There have been growing mutterings as to whether the promised community benefits, such as affordable housing provision within the scheme, were being diluted.
Behind the scenes a number of significant parties in Cheltenham and the wider county have begun to grow frustrated and concerned about the speed of progress.
And then there are the concerns over commitments to improvements to junction 10 of the M5 to provide access in all directions on and off the motorway.
Work on the junction, approved by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander in June 2025, is scheduled to start early in 2027 with completion expected in 2028.
Or will it?
Question marks remain over funding. It was revealed in September that costs had risen from £70 million to £363m leaving a funding gap of £110m.
Some £40 million of that will be taken care of with more public money from Gloucestershire’s councils, but central government is yet to confirm it will foot the bill for the remaining £70m.
But while the project “remains on track” those who have begun to get frustrated by the lack of progress continue to publicly support the scheme.
And why wouldn’t they?
Read more: Concern over the management of the Golden Valley Development
The £1 billion tag line is an estimate of what those behind the project claim will be invested in the county as a result, along with the creation of 12,000 jobs and thousands of new homes.
The potential ripple effect across the local economy should be unprecedented, aside from the less well-publicised plans around nuclear that could take place down in Berkeley that still risk overtaking its north Gloucestershire rival.
If the Golden Valley plans just submitted to the borough council are approved, it will mean we truly can talk with much more confidence about 2026 as THE year when spades will eventually go in the ground.
“This is the final application which must be made before work can begin. It sets out more detailed proposals, including layout, appearance, scale, access and landscaping,” is how HBD’s marketing release puts it, a release widely cut and pasted on other websites and social media channels.
Hamer Boot, executive director at HBD, is quoted as saying: “We look forward to moving into delivery this year.”
If that happens, 2027 will be the year when that first phase - the IDEA building and ROUTER transport hub - opens its doors.
More buildings will open in 2029, as will the first 1,000 homes, with “the biggest phase yet” coming in 2033 when “diverse residential development, blurring the lines between hotel and residential” comes on line alongside “workspaces with best-in-class amenity offer” and a second transport hub.
In 2035 we should expect the “future industry quarter”, the final phase of a project that will by then have taken the best part of 20 years to conclude.
As one member of the business community told Raikes today, they still have reservations but remain right behind the project publicly, and confident 2026 will indeed finally be lift off for the Golden Valley.
Before reminding us that “we live in uncertain times.”