Bicester Vision

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Bicester Vision

A business focused partnership made up of public and private sector partners.

16/09/2026

Welcome to the team, Helen Joy.

Helen joins Bicester Vision as our Partnership Manager, with a clear brief: helping local businesses support one another.

That means building networks, opening doors where they are needed, and making sure businesses get real value out of things like our Best Practice visits. There are a few new programmes launching soon too, and Helen will be right at the heart of them. Watch this space.

Helen also brings twelve years of running People Spark, her own leadership consultancy, working with middle managers and senior leaders across SMEs, particularly in technical and engineering businesses, on the people side of the job.

If your business is working on something where a connection would help, Helen would like to hear from you. Email her at [email protected], or come and find her at the next Bicester Vision event.

10/09/2026

Start a business in Oxfordshire and you are meaningfully more likely to still be trading five years later than you would be almost anywhere else in England.

Of the businesses started here in 2016, 46% were still going in 2021. Nationally that figure was 38%, and across the South East it was 43%.

Eight percentage points does not sound dramatic until you picture it as a room. A hundred people start something in Oxfordshire, a hundred start something elsewhere, and five years on there are eight more still standing here.

There are around 32,200 businesses in the county, and the share of them growing fast is a little above both the national and regional average too.

Some of that is the obvious stuff: research, skills, proximity to Oxford. But a fair bit of it is the less measurable version, which is people knowing who to call. Advice from someone who has already had the problem. An introduction that saves six months.

That last part is the bit we can actually do something about, and it is why we keep putting businesses, councils and community organisations in the same room.

Source and full baseline in the comments.

08/09/2026

Your local library is running a free healthy lifestyle course every Thursday.

Beezee Adults is a twelve week programme run by Oxfordshire County Council, covering the practical side of feeling better: food, movement, and the small habits that actually hold. Sessions run 10am to 12pm at Bicester Library on Wesley Lane, and there is an online option if a Thursday morning in town is not realistic.

It has been going since May and it is free to attend. The programme is aimed at adults above a healthy weight, and the full detail is on the booking page.

Oxfordshire County Council is one of our members, and this is a good example of what having them round the table actually looks like. Real support, in the town, at no cost, for anyone who wants it.

Booking link in the comments.

03/09/2026

Put Friday 18 September in the diary. Tickets for the Cherwell Business Awards are on sale now.

This is the fourteenth year of the CBAs, and it is one of the few nights in the year when most of the district's business community ends up in the same room. Black tie, drinks from 6:30pm at The Chesterton Hotel, dinner, then the awards at nine and entertainment until carriages at midnight. £105 per person.

We are proud to be sponsoring the Small Business Award again this year, alongside Wednesday Business Club.

Cherwell District Council is headline sponsor, and there are plenty of familiar faces among the category sponsors: Siemens Healthineers on Apprentice of the Year, Bicester Village on Charity and Community, SE-Solicitors on Large Business.

Every one of these categories is full of businesses doing brilliant things across Cherwell, and this is the night they get to stand up and be recognised for it.

Get your ticket, and we will see you there.

Ticket link in the comments.

Image credit: Cherwell Business Awards

01/09/2026

1.44 million square feet, and a decade of building ahead of it.

Bicester Motion has submitted the first phase of its masterplan to Cherwell District Council. Four outline applications: demonstration and hospitality space at The Rushes, more employment space at Command Works, around 200 homes at Motion Living, and a new research and scale up site still to come.

The 444 acre former RAF airfield already holds more than fifty mobility businesses and over five hundred jobs. If the masterplan goes through, the estimate is £1.19 billion added to the UK economy each year, 5,600 construction jobs, and around 7,600 once the buildings are running.

That is a serious amount of opportunity landing on our doorstep. Careers people can build without leaving Oxfordshire, and room for local firms to grow alongside a site that is becoming one of the best known mobility campuses in the country.

Bicester Motion sits on our executive board and we are delighted to see this next stage begin.

Full detail in the press release, link in the comments.

Source and image credit: Bicester Motion

27/08/2026

Six councils now. Three from 2028.

That is the whole reorganisation in six words. Oxfordshire and West Berkshire move from the six councils that have run things since 1974 to three new unitary authorities, going live on 1 April 2028.

The date to watch before then is 30 September, when the consultation results are published.

Source: Oxfordshire County Council.

25/08/2026

Look at what is being built in Bicester right now, not what is proposed.

Symmetry Park Phase 3 is under construction: two units totalling 271,000 square feet, targeted for completion in early 2027, with around 300 jobs attached. Existing occupiers on the park include Ocado, DP World, DPD, Bentley Designs and Medline.

Bicester Arc is a 48 acre commercial park with its own 13.7MVA power supply, and its first office building is due for occupation this autumn.

Development on that scale reshapes a local economy quietly. New occupiers arrive, the town gains jobs, and over a few years a web of local relationships forms around each site.

Those relationships get built in rooms, not in inboxes. It is why Bicester Vision exists. Four times a year we put local businesses, developers, community organisations and all three tiers of local government round the same tables, and a good deal of what comes out of it is people knowing each other before they need to.

If that sounds useful, keep your eyes peeled for our next partnership meeting to be announced, and make sure you grab a seat!

Source: Tritax and Sladen Estates

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21/08/2026

What is the youngest age you would give someone real responsibility?

Not a trick question. We are curious what Bicester employers actually think.

19/08/2026

Training budgets in most small firms go to the people who need them least.

The senior team gets the conference ticket. The 26 year old who has just picked up three direct reports gets a link to a webinar and a good luck.

Nearly half of working age people in Cherwell hold a degree or higher, so the raw material is here. Developing it is the bit that gets skipped when everybody is busy. (Source: ONS Annual Population Survey.)

Worth checking where your last training budget actually went.

15/08/2026

One family moved to Bicester this week and does not know any of this yet.

They do not know that a 444 acre former RAF site on the edge of town is turning into a centre for electric propulsion, or that one of the best known outlet villages in the world sits twenty minutes' walk from an ordinary housing estate, or which of the chip shops is the good one.

They will work it out. Everyone does!

Bicester has been growing fast for years and that momentum is only going to continue.

What development are you most looking forward to seeing in Bicester?

Photo credit to Eddy Gong Xi of Beauty and Bicester

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