Why Invest in the Thames Valley?
The Thames Valley is the fastest-growing region in the UK, outside of London. The region encompasses companies from all over the world, covering a wide range of sectors, who are brought together in a connected business community. For this reason, the Thames Valley is considered to the be the UK’s true ‘turbo-economy’, the ‘Silicon Valley of Europe’ and therefore, the place to be.
The Thames Valley is home to….
The No. 1 University in the world
The University of Oxford has been recognised for sixconsecutive years as the world’s best university.
Highest Performing Cities
Oxford and Reading listed in PwC’s Good Growth for Cities Report as the highest performing cities for the fourth year in the row.
Heathrow Airport
The UK’s largest airport, handling over 80 million international passengers annually and flying to 206 worldwide destinations.
Rising GVA ahead of the UK
Thames Valley is expected to exceed the UK’s growth with forecast Gross Value Added (GVA) growth of 9.40% between 2019 and 2025.
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Most Productive City
Slough is ranked as the most productive city in the UK, with productivity per capita rising to £100,000 per worker in the 2020 Cities Outlook Report.
Best Place to Work
Slough named the best place to work in the UK based on its ease of finding a job, relatively high average salaries in comparison to living costs, employee satisfaction and cost of housing.
With a wealth of visitor and heritage sites …
And a thriving economy…
As the fastest-growing region outside of London and a much more cost-effective alternative, the Thames Valley offers great potential for growth. It also boasts some impressive statistics:
The Thames Valley economy is worth £83,848 million, bigger than 11 of the EU’s 28 member states, including Hungary, Luxembourg and Bulgaria.
The region’s economy is expected to be larger in 2023 than 2019, with an annual GVA growth forecast of 0.39%, in fact Reading is forecast to rise ahead of London with 0.58% GVA.
Employment rates are forecast to grow (0.31%) above the South East average by 2023 in the Thames Valley.
70% of international companies setting up in the UK for the first time will locate within one hour of Heathrow Airport.
Find out more about the region’s thriving economy from the following reports…
EY’s Regional Economic Forecast
The Thames Valley is set to be one of the strongest performing regions over the next three years, highlighting a 0.60% predicted growth in Gross Value Added (GVA), higher than London (0.51%) and the South East (0.39%) region as a whole. Click on the report to find out more.
“The report provides evidence that the Thames Valley is the UK’s true ‘turbo-region’ with an array of significant resilient sectors, including life sciences, technology and clean tech, which will be one of the key areas of focus and opportunity for the UK’s zero carbon aspirations.”
Paul Britton, CEO of the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce
PwC’s Good Growth for Cities Report
Oxford and Reading have topped the index for the past five years, reflecting consistent performance and improvement across the board of indices. This year’s ratings have shown the cities as particularly strong in income growth, jobs, skills, and health.
The Index sets out to show there is more to life, work and general wellbeing than simply measuring GDP. It measures the performance of 42 of the UK’s largest cities, England’s LEPs and ten Combined Authorities against a basket of 10 factors which the public think are most important when it comes to economic wellbeing.
“The strong performance of both Oxford and Reading in the PwC Good Growth for Cities index follows increasing levels of available jobs, growing incomes, and a diversity of skills.”
John Ellis, PwC Reading Office Senior Partner
Click on the report to find out more
Click on the report to find out more
fDi’s European Cities and Regions of the Future 2020/21 Report
Cities and towns from across the Thames Valley scored highly in an array of categories for the annual fDi Magazine report on Europe’s Top Cities and Regions of the Future for 2020/21.
Three Thames Valley towns and cities were ranked in the Top 10: Northern European Cities of the Future, including Slough (5th) and Newbury (9th), whilst Slough was ranked 1st in the Small European Cities of the Future category, followed by Reading (5th) and Bracknell (10th).
Key sector strengths
Technology
The UK is a significant market opportunity for inward investors and at its heart – the Thames Valley – is one of its most important clusters of innovative, high-growth, IP-rich companies across the full range of tech sub-sectors.
Oxford listed as one of the top 20 European Investment Tech Cities
Berkshire has 600+ tech start-ups p.a.
Largest mega-cluster of data centres in Europe
More than 8,000 technology-led companies based in the region
Life Sciences
Within the Thames Valley, the Life Sciences and Healthcare (LSH) sector is one of the most important benefitting from a number of world leading academic institutions and industry centres of excellence.
Heart of the ‘Golden Trianlge‘ LSH cluster
More than 135 LSH companies based in the region, with 8,000 employees
Leading medical research institutes, 5 UK Academic Heath Science Centres
University of Oxford ranked No. 1 in Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health (8th year)
The Thames Valley is the second engine of growth of the UK economy, outside of London and that’s for good reason – the Thames Valley is going to be the fastest-growing region through to 2020 and Reading, at the centre of the Thames Valley is going to be the fastest growing UK city for the next 5 years.
Simon Greenstreet, Head of Communications, Bayer
