As part of our Invest Plymouth Business Spotlight series, we’re shining a light on the workspaces that help businesses grow and succeed in our city. This feature focuses on City Business Park and The Business Centre, two dynamic hubs that provide office and workspace solutions for a diverse range of businesses.
From innovative startups to established companies, the business centres support a thriving community of professionals across various industries. In this spotlight, we hear from the Kate Martin-Kendall, Workspace Manager, who shares insights into the businesses based here, the advantages of working in these spaces, and the role these hubs play in Plymouth’s growing economy.
If you’re looking for a workspace that fosters collaboration, flexibility, and business success, read on to learn more about what City Business Park and The Business Centre have to offer.
Can you introduce Plymouth City Business Park and Plymouth Business Centre?
The Business Centre in Cattedown and City Business Park in Stoke are managed by Plymouth City Council and sit within its Economic Development Service, providing flexible managed workspaces suitable for small and micro businesses.
City Business Park has 130 business units suitable for office, storage and workshop use. The Business Centre has 22 offices. All are available on easy in, easy out terms at competitive rental levels, providing tenants with the flexibility that affords.
The centres offer friendly and supportive communities of like-minded businesses and are perfect for those looking to start or grow their business and with the Business Parks Team on hand to help, they provide the perfect environment for this to happen.
How long have you been supporting businesses in Plymouth?
Recognising the importance of small businesses within the local economy and aware of the lack of suitable premises to accommodate them at the time, Plymouth City Council set up City Business Park in a former glove factory in June 1984 to encourage and help those who were unemployed or facing unemployment consider self-employment as a viable option.
Five years later in March 1989, the business park expanded into the neighbouring building, enabling it to extend its offer to support and develop existing and recently-established small businesses.
In 2000 Park Link was constructed on the same site, offering modern purpose-built office space.
The City Council extended its offer further still, opening City Business Park’s sister facility The Business Centre in Cattedown in 2008.
What types of businesses and industries are based in these workspaces?
The variety of activities carried out by our tenants is huge and whatever you need, you’ll likely find it at one of our centres. They vary from single proprietors to companies employing 100s of staff at various locations across the UK.
| Professional services | accountants and bookkeeping, solicitors, web designers, IT support, architects, media companies, project management, public transport, property letting agents, security systems, ecologists |
| Healthcare | counselling, massage, alternative therapies and treatments, care support services, aesthetics, baby swimming lessons, medical testing |
| Construction | building contractors, plumbers, electricians, flooring contractors, carpentry, property maintenance, property management, home improvements, cleaning services, kitchen fittings, heating engineers, locksmiths, asbestos services, home improvements |
| Creatives | fashion accessories, fabric, soft furnishings, lino printing, florists, artists, art workshops, candle-makers, coffee providers, children’s entertainers, gaming, jewellery and glass making, commercial printers, braille products and services, sailmakers and repairers |
| Education | training providers |
How do these business hubs support their tenants beyond just providing office space?
Our centres provide a community of like-minded businesses and a welcoming environment. This is particularly beneficial to our micro businesses who may comprise just one person working on their own. We provide a community for them, where they don’t feel isolated. Friendships are made at our centres, as are good working relationships.
The business centres encourage inter-trading. When printers, legal professionals, accountants, builders, electricians and plumbers share the same business space, it makes sense to use the services offered by the business neighbours you see every day and with whom you have built good relationships.
We’re also able to provide a signposting service to other resources available within the City Council, such as business advice, property searches, etc.
What are the key benefits of being located in City Business Park or The Business Centre?
Both centres offer workspaces on easy in, easy out terms so tenants are not tied into long leases. This means that an entrepreneur who has been developing an idea for a business, or someone who has been working from home since the pandemic for example, can rent one of our workspaces to see how it suits them. If it works out, all well and good. If not, then nothing has been lost and they’re free to move on without having incurred great initial expense or long-term commitment.
In the same way, if our workspaces do suit them, we offer them the flexibility to expand – or even downsize – when the time is right.
Additionally and importantly, we offer our tenants the groundwork and confidence to develop and expand their business to a level where it is viable for them to relocate to more conventional business premises should they so wish. This can be after just a few short months, or several years. Many highly successful businesses in the city started off at City Business Park or The Business Centre.
We also offer meeting room space, administration and postal services and, in the case of City Business Park, 24-hour access, seven days a week, 365 days of the year and plenty of parking. And both centres have on-site cafés.
We try and make life as simple as possible for our tenants so they’re free to concentrate their time on developing their businesses.
Do your tenants primarily serve local Plymouth clients, the wider South West region, or national/international markets?
Our tenant businesses are involved in both local and much wider markets, providing goods and services to local people and the rest of the UK, as well as exporting internationally thanks to the ability to promote their offer via social media and other online platforms.
Can you share a success story of a business that has thrived within one of these spaces?
There are so many success stories that could be shared including the recent influx of artists, makers, and creatives taking space in the workshop part of our building thereby creating an exciting ‘artists quarter’, who not only produce some amazing work but also share their expertise by running workshops, either within their studios or in our ‘Hub’ that’s available for anyone to hire.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have companies like Pioneering Independence Limited who provide a crucial bespoke service, supporting individuals with a variety of complex needs live independently within the community. They relocated to City Business Park eight years ago as it provided them with a professional office environment with ample onsite parking, for an affordable price on flexible tenancy terms – exactly what the business was looking for.
Since relocating to the City Business Park, the business has been able to stabilise its operations and consider its future growth, in part thanks to the support provided by the management team who they consider to be a critical business partner for the company.
What do you enjoy most about managing these business spaces and being part of Plymouth’s business community?
The best part of my role is the variety it brings, not only in the work we do but the people we support and the buildings we look after. We have in the region of 120 businesses that we support across our two sites, and hundreds of visitors a week.
It sounds like a cliché but no two days really are ever the same, and that’s what we like. This brings its challenges of course as much of what we do is reactive, and any plans we make often go out of the window. But the satisfaction we get from what we do, the relationships we build with our tenants and the great atmosphere that exists at both centres is certainly what keeps me committed to the role.
Added to that is the fantastic team I have around me. We’re a small team with a large remit, and every single one of the team is committed to what we do are and totally supportive of each other, and I fully believe this is paramount to the success of the centres.
Kate, what’s your role as Workspace Manager, and what drew you to this role?
My role is to create a thriving ecosystem for small businesses to develop and flourish, enabling them also to contribute to the city’s economic prosperity through the creation of jobs and services.
I have been part of the City Council’s Economic Development Team for nearly 28 years, and my roles have always been about supporting new and existing businesses and attracting inward investment. Moving to this role allowed me to continue that support but in a totally different way, by being very much at the centre of the action.
Me and my team are based in the same buildings as the businesses we help every working day, allowing us to provide crucial support and a physical presence so we’re on hand to immediately address any issues that our tenants may have.
It was a very different way of working compared to my previous roles and this was partly what drew me to it, and the draw is still there having been in post for over 10 years now and still enjoying every minute.