Oxfordshire: VSL celebrates 15 years of growth
Commercial property specialist VSL & Partners is celebrating its 15-year anniversary, toasting a period that has seen it remain the top performing Oxfordshire agency for more than eight years.
Established in 2002 with a team of ten, the Kidlington based firm now employs the largest commercial property agency team in the area. The team has representation on around 40% of deals completed across central Oxford and the A34 ‘Innovation Knowledge Corridor’.
In a market that is dominated by national agents, VSL has been ranked as the most active agent and dealmaker of the year by leading property publication Estates Gazette Interactive (EGi) for the last eight years. The team continues to create value for their clients by combining industry acumen with detailed local market intelligence and research.
Across Oxfordshire, VSL completed deals in the industrial, office, retail, land and investment sectors involving 767,000 sq ft of space from June 2016 to July 2017 for its clients. A large percentage of these transactions were with companies in the flourishing science and technology sector, which in 2017 accounted for 70% of total industrial take-up in the county.
Oxfordshire is experiencing an exciting growth period in the science and technology market with new companies relocating to the area and with the emergence of a secure and substantial funding base for the Oxford University spin-out companies. The continued provision of this funding will be key to future growth in the science and tech sector emerging from Oxford - a city which has created its very own innovation ecosystem to enable these spin-out companies to flourish.
According to Nesta’s ‘State of Small Business’ report, Oxford is one of the only two non-London Boroughs in the UK’s top-10 for inward venture capital investment. The report also finds South Oxfordshire has one of the highest five-year ‘survival rates’ for SMEs in the UK.
Oxford’s technology sector helped it into second place behind London in a ranking of UK cities total economic output, according to the latest UK Powerhouse report by Irwin Mitchell.
Oxfordshire has also topped a list of growth cities for the second year running. PwC’s annual ‘Good Growth for Cities’ index measures the performance of UK cities in terms of economic success and wellbeing. The Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership was also ranked first in CoStar’s Local Enterprise Partnership Index for the most successful in the country at driving economic development.
Richard Venables, director at VSL, said: “It’s great to see Oxford topping yet another league table, a further endorsement of it being a great place to live and work. We have enjoyed an immensely active and successful 15-years since VSL was founded in 2002. Despite the global financial crisis, we managed to stay strong, which is testament to the success of our strategy to remain a niche independent agency, committed to doing business in Oxfordshire.”
