On February 5th, The West of England Combined Authority submitted its bid to host a Great Western Freeport that could create up to 50,000 jobs in the region and 90,000 nationally, read the full story here.
Freeports are exactly what the UK needs right now, they reduce costs and bureaucracy for occupiers, encouraging manufacturing businesses to invest and create new jobs. Freeports are a major opportunity for a post-Brexit UK to increase trade with the US and fast-growing Asian markets at a time when the UK is signing more trade deals with global partners , Gravity stands ready to support and enable the UK increase international trade.
There are already many successful free trading zones around the world, with the most successful Freeports attracting business and creating jobs. The Great Western (Bristol) Freeport has immense opportunity to kick start a new era of British manufacturing, providing sustainable, innovative, long-term jobs that would drive post-Covid Britain’s road to a green recovery. Myself, and the team at Gravity are incredibly proud to play our part in this.
If you are a high-tech/advanced manufacturing business and would like to know how you could benefit from operating in a low-carbon free trading zone, contact. Info@thisisgravity.co.uk
A major development set to bring thousands of jobs and huge investment to the heart of Somerset has reached an important milestone.
Work is progressing apace on one of the UK’s largest commercial smart campuses – Gravity at Bridgwater’s M5, Junction 23, and next month the focus shifts to connecting the low-carbon 635-acre site to the A39 and main road network.
This is the next important milestone in this major scheme, expected to bring 4,000 jobs to the county.
This crucial work will require the closure of the A39 from Hillside to Hall Road on Puriton Hill while this next stage is carried out. The closure will commence on Monday 8 February and will last until Sunday 21 February. The road will be closed to all traffic at all times between these dates except for residents. A diversion will be in place for motorists accessing or leaving Junction 23 from and to the Street direction.
We fully understand this work will cause disruption and we’ll do everything in our power to carry this out as quickly as possible and push this exciting project towards its completion.
We’ve worked closely with our fantastic local partners, including Somerset County Council, Puriton, Woolvington and Bawdrip Parish Councils, Sedgemoor District Council and Bridgwater Chamber of Trade, to make sure they’re fully up-to-date with the project.
Gravity will be a huge boost to the economy of Bridgwater and Somerset and the whole of the South West – it’s a fantastic state-of-the art low-carbon business campus which will really put us on the map in terms of attracting new and established businesses to the County,” said Cllr David Hall, Somerset County Council’s Cabinet Member for Economic Development.
We appreciate there will be some short-term disruption while the A39 is closed for both residents and motorists heading to and from the M5, but the long term gain for the county is immense.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director
Residents should please liaise with on-site staff with regard to access.
The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has secured over £3m from the Government to test how the country can seize the full benefits of 5G and help businesses harness the power of modern technology.
WECA’s 5G Logistics project programme will develop 5G products and services to support operations at Bristol Port and Gravity Smart Campus.
The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has secured over £3m from the Government to test how the country can seize the full benefits of 5G and help businesses harness the power of modern technology.
WECA’s 5G Logistics project programme will develop 5G products and services to support operations at Bristol Port and Gravity Smart Campus and demonstrate a smart and dynamic port environment. The project will focus on security, traceability, and real-time tracking of goods within and across extendable virtual boundaries – and between public and private networks.
It will demonstrate how 5G private network capabilities can offer efficiency and productivity improvements to the logistics sector and more widely, allowing real-time location tracking of individual items, improvements to road traffic management and replacing low value, manually-intensive processes with 5G enabled autonomous systems. The project offers the potential for such advances in technology to be implemented industry-wide; including at other ports in the UK, Enterprise Zones or other business parks.
The Government has backed the project with £3m as part of its 5G Create competition – which supports innovators exploring new uses for 5G to help improve people’s lives and boost businesses.
“5G has the potential to revolutionise whole industries and economies, creating exciting new jobs and opportunities. I want the West of England to be at the forefront of this revolution.
We have already led one successful trial and I’m thrilled that our plan to demonstrate how a smart and secure port could operate using the Internet of Things has been approved for funding by the Government. Backing innovation and the jobs of the future and bringing new investment to the region by securing a Freeport are key parts of our plan for economic recovery, so this is a big vote of confidence in the West of England.”
The Government wants technology to form part of its wider strategy for the border. It aims to establish resilient ‘ports of the future’ at border crossing points to make the experience smoother and more secure for travellers and traders, while better protecting the public and environment.
Technology can play an important role in making freeports as accessible as possible for traders. The Government consulted publicly on the UK’s future border strategy last summer, seeking views on how it can make the UK’s border the most effective in the world. The opportunities presented by a technology-enabled border was a major theme of the responses.
Matt Warman, Minister for Digital Infrastructure said:
“This trailblazing project – funded through our £200 million 5G trials programme – will explore how revolutionary new 5G connectivity could make our ports more efficient and secure as we attract major investment from across the globe post-Brexit. I look forward to seeing it in action.”
Steve West, Chair of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership, said:
“Testing new ways of delivering services and harnessing this new technology could hold the key to a more connected, more advanced and sustainable future for the West of England.
Super-fast and ultra-reliable 5G is expected to offer an increased level of connectivity and new opportunities for businesses, including better remote working, and is likely to bring significant business growth opportunities for our region’s tech sector.”
London, January 6, 2020 – Gravity is pleased to announce that it will be hosting a forward-thinking and catalyzing round table discussion ‘Powering the UK’s Green Recovery’. The event will focus on how the UK can practically implement the government’s ambitious commitments to achieve Net-zero by 2050.
Chaired by Gravity Director, Lord David Triesman and supported by Blackstock Consultancy the discussion will bring together industry-leading ideas from public and private sectors on some of the most pressing issues surrounding the ‘Green Recovery’, including;
What will the delivery of a Green Recovery look like?
How do we transform vision and rhetoric into concrete action?
How will a net-zero focused stimulus work in practice?
Highlights of the roundtable will be freely available after the event.
Gravity and Alun Griffiths are continuing to host the Link Road Q&A sessions virtually. The next sessions will be held on Wednesday 20th Jnaury. If you want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us online for those virtual Q&A community drop-in sessions.
The location may have changed, but the opportunity to ask any question on the Link Road has not.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director runs these informative sessions with the help of Alun Griffiths and Stantec. They will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the progress of the link road.
Gravity’s chairman Martin Bellamy explains why a post-coronavirus green recovery is so important to the South West at a national webinar
Gravity is championing its ‘smart campus’ as a UK destination for inward investment and a key flagship project in the South West with a wealth of activity, including participation in discussions hosted by the Western Gateway and Business West and overseas activity with Department for International Trade.
Welcome to Gravity’s December newsletter!
Despite the challenges we, like everyone, have faced in 2020, this has also been a year of fantastic progress for Gravity. We have been relentless in our pursuit of transforming our vision of a smart campus that offers a blueprint for a cleaner, smarter future into a reality.
Our proposals will be set out in a Local Development Order (LDO), which is simply another form of planning permission. An LDO sets overall standards and guidelines for a complex development, which helps create more certainty about what the site will offer. Our LDO proposal will evolve during 2021, including a formal public consultation.
We have also made good progress on the link road – a key access road that will link Gravity to the A39, which connects to Junction 23 of the M5. The new road is the first key step in bringing Gravity forward and will be open in the spring of 2021.
2020 has also seen us draw up our plan for a farmstead of six homes at Knowle Hill near Puriton. These high energy performance, low-carbon homes demonstrate our commitment towards creating a cleaner and more sustainable future.
We are looking forward to another year full of progress. 2021 will see us work with our partners to collaborate with, and support, Sedgemoor District Council to adopt the LDO. This will represent an important milestone, enabling us to support the government’s marketing of the Gravity Enterprise Zone to investors from across the world. Somerset will be at the heart of a green economic recovery, accelerating positive action to address climate change.
Please read on for a summary of our key news. Finally, we hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.
Your opinion counts!
2021 will be a defining year for Gravity as we start to shape the Local Development Order (LDO), which will set the overall planning guidance for the site. Your views count and we will start a formal public consultation on our proposals next year. This will continue, and build on, the open conversation that we have already established with the community with our link road and Knowle Hill projects.
Collaborating with the community is of paramount importance to us at Gravity! We were incredibly honoured to support the amazing efforts of the local community in delivering over 7,000 free meals earlier this year.
Part of our commitment to working with the community has been to enlist the support of locally based consultation experts Social. You are welcome to contact the Social team with any questions about how the consultation process will work at gravity@social.co.uk or call 0330 1070 353. Further information on how you can get involved will follow in the New Year.
Village Enhancement Scheme
Sedgemoor District Council has approved Gravity’s planning application for a ‘Village Enhancement Scheme’ to improve connections between Puriton and Woolavington. The scheme includes traffic-calming measures and a new car-free path between the two villages which also connects to the Gravity site and the 37 Club. Find out more.
Securing local jobs for local people
“A real ray of sunshine – amongst the gloom of the recent news of national redundancies” – that was a quote from Cllr Gill Slocombe, Sedgemoor’s Portfolio Holder for Inward Investment and Growth – as she endorsed a key Local Labour Agreement with Gravity.
The agreement paves the way to secure local benefit and social value by creating skills, training and employment opportunities for the Sedgemoor community. Find out more
Knowle Hill
Thank you to everyone who has told us what they think about our plan to create a new community of six, low-carbon homes at Knowle Hill, near Puriton. Working with our design partner architect Origin3, our plan re-imagines the former water filtration works at Knowle Hill as a farmstead of six high energy performance homes. We will submit a planning application to Sedgemoor District Council early in the new year. Find out more
Community salutes link road’s ‘smiley man’
Steve Bryce of contractor Alun Griffiths, who has been working on the link road roundabout, has been presented with flowers and a card by the local community for being a ‘happy and smiley’ man. Steve has been on site at the new roundabout for several months and has become well known in the locality for greeting everyone who passes by.
Link Road Update
Gravity teamed up with its link road contractor Alun Griffiths to present a webinar hosted by the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) about how the new road is being built with a focus on sustainable growth. Over 145,000 tonnes of site material has been transported from the Gravity site and reused to construct the link road. Watch Gravity’s ‘Delivering Clean Growth’ webinar for full details about our sustainable materials management strategy. We continue to hold bi-monthly drop-in sessions for people to find out more about the link road. The next session will take place in late January or early February – please check our website for more info.
Climate Emergency Strategy
Gravity welcomes the launch of the Somerset-wide Climate Emergency Strategy agreed by the county’s five councils. The strategy sets out a plan for Somerset to go carbon neutral by 2030. Details of the plan can be found here.
Green recovery
In a recent Real Estate Live panel event hosted by Property Week, chairman of Gravity Martin Bellamy explained why a post-coronavirus green recovery was so important to the South West. Martin commented: “The thing that’s going to have the biggest impact in the South West by a long way is the opportunities that will be afforded to the region by the necessity to transition to a green economy.”Watch the webinar
Fulfilling Gravity’s planning conditions
Gravity continues to address the planning conditions and obligations associated with the existing planning permission on the main site. This helps to make progress by improving certainty for potential occupiers. The Strategic Design Code and Strategic Landscape Masterplan have been approved earlier in the year. Documents have been submitted to the council in respect of further conditions relating to remediation, ecological management, surface water operations and management and effluent infrastructure. In total there are 11 conditions to discharge.
Gravity goes global
The Department for International Trade (DIT) presented Gravity as an investment opportunity at the Word Pensions Summit 2020, which took place virtually in October. Find out more
Gravity is proud to be part of a South West Business Insider article detailing the campaign to bring at least one of the government’s proposed freeports to the South West.
The return of a freeport system is designed to encourage economic growth through international trade by offering exemptions to
Our Director – Planning and Economic Development, Claire Pearce gave Gravity’s full support to the West of England proposition.
We’re 100 percent behind the West of England proposition because of our proximity to Bristol Port, but also its access to rail, at the moment as the marshalling port for Hinkley Point C. We see huge potential, in the post-Brexit context for Gravity to offer what is quite an exceptional site, in combination with the proximity of Bristol Port. It’s quite a unique proposition for the UK – to provide scale and advanced manufacturing facilities that can bring in that new era of clean economic growth.”
Gravity with our link road contractor, Alun Griffiths recently delivered a presentation to the Institute of Civil Engineering. The presentation highlighted how our partnership has enabled Gravity to deliver more sustainable growth while promoting innovation.
Programme Director, Paul Lowndes gave an overview of progress to date and outlined how 145,000 tonnes of site won material has been recycled and used to construct the link road.
Gravity and Alun Griffiths will be hosting the next Link Road Q&A session virtually if you want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us online for those virtual Q&A community drop-in sessions.
The location may have changed, but the opportunity to ask any question on the Link Road has not.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director runs these informative sessions with the help of Alun Griffiths and Stantec. They will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the progress of the link road.
