Bristol & Bath is the UK’s most consistently competitive and productive city region economy after London and Edinburgh. High profile political leaders like Bristol Mayor George Ferguson combined with the empowered West of England Local Enterprise Partnership are helping to raise the regions profile and make it a hotspot for investment.

Approximately 90 minutes by train from London, this city region offers highly competitive property prices and exceptional connectivity. There’s superfast broadband, an expanding airport, a motorway hub, fast train links and a deep water port.

Beyond this, the key draw for international organisations like IBM, Airbus, GE, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Oracle and Aardman Animations lies in its booming sectors: hothouses of creative and digital production, high tech, low carbon, aerospace and advanced engineering, all supported by a strong professional services industry and powered by a dynamic commercial and academic research and development base.

Creative, Innovative, Unorthodox

Bristol & Bath is a region with a rich and diverse cultural landscape. It is home to award winning museums, street art galleries and the only city in the world granted UNESCO status. It has a vibrant contemporary music scene, major sporting events and a world-class festival programme, everything from Jane Austen to Banksy.

This vibrancy has generated one of the most powerful and dynamic creative and digital sectors making it the place to create, which is no wonder the region is home to the BBC Natural History Unit series Planet Earth, Wallace & Gromit, Deal or No Deal at Endemol West plus international film locations for Harry Potter, Sherlock and the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall amongst others.

Creativity

More than 500 million users every month view digital content

produced in Bristol & Bath

Creativity and independence not only makes a good social scene but also a dynamic business environment. Bristol & Bath has the highest number of entrepreneurs per capita, in part thanks to the region’s business and university network, which includes the University of Bristol, ranked 8th in the UK and 30th in the world, and University of Bath providing the best campus university in the country.

This network has helped to create a number of great Bristol & Bath born businesses such as global giants Aardman Animations, Hargreaves Lansdown, Future Publishing, Icera (acquired by Nvidia), and Yogscast, the largest gaming YouTube channel in the world.

Independence

Bristol & Bath has a strong heritage of inventiveness. From Brunel’s railways and bridges to Concorde, the region has led in world-changing innovation for hundreds of years.

Home to one of the largest clusters of silicon designers outside of Silicon Valley, Bristol & Bath has developed technology that makes modern electronic devices and gadgets possible. Today, half of all cars worldwide have engine management chips designed in Bristol & Bath and over a billion TV set top boxes around the world are powered by Bristol & Bath microchips.

Today, the region is known as an innovation hotbed, where international entrepreneurs collaborate with designers, engineers, technologists and academics to create new ideas, products and services.

Innovation

“Truly original ideas come to life when people dare to be different, and our environment inspires us to do that. It’s a combination of inventive engineering, passion for technology and brave design.”

Sir James Dyson, Inventor

Bristol is European Green Capital City in 2015 as a result of its commitment to environmental issues and continuing ambition to promote the region on the world stage and drive investment, innovation and growth.

Bristol & Bath boasts exceptional local expertise in this area: global players such as DNV GL and Alstom are here, working on delivering new sustainable sources of energy, while Airbus works to reduce fuel consumption and emissions from aircraft by over 40%.

Alongside these, there are world-class multi-disciplinary environmental consultancies and the largest cluster of tidal energy companies in the world.

Sustainability

“In Bristol & Bath we’re working on the A350. It’s an advanced composite aircraft at the cutting edge of technology that will revolutionise long-haul travel for years to come with big reductions in operating costs, fuel and noise emissions.”

Mark Steward, Director, Airbus

Financial and professional services account for 25% of Bristol’s economic output. A fact that indicates the very high level of expertise of its workforce compared to other locations.

The region is the preferred headquarters for leading legal and professional services companies including Friends Life, Burges Salmon, Hargreaves Lansdown and Lloyds Bank, all of whom benefit from a highly skilled local graduate pool – the University of Bath’s MBA is ranked second in the UK – and prime office rents are 70% lower than London’s West End.

Professional

Home to FTSE 100 company, Hargreaves Lansdown, which administers over

£44 billion on behalf of 650,000 clients