Bicester Vision

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Bicester Vision

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

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

13/08/2026

Cherwell District Council will not exist in 2028. Neither will Oxfordshire County Council. The government has confirmed that Oxfordshire and West Berkshire will be served by three new unitary councils, with the new authorities going live on 1 April 2028. Source: Oxfordshire County Council.

The six councils we have now have been in place since 1974. So this is the biggest change to how local government works here in more than fifty years, and most businesses in Bicester have heard almost nothing about it.

What happens next, in order.
1. The government's statutory consultation ran from 5 February to 26 March this year. The results are due on 30 September 2026.
2. A Structural Changes Order is expected in the autumn.
3. Elections for the new authorities are in May 2027, and shadow authorities run the transition until vesting day on 1 April 2028.

Why it matters if you run a business here.
Planning, procurement, licensing, business rates and every other council touchpoint will eventually sit with a different organisation, and during the transition you will be dealing with bodies that are being built while they operate.
If you sell to the public sector, your buyer is changing.
If you are waiting on a planning decision, the people deciding it may not be in the same job in eighteen months.

Bicester Vision sits between businesses and all three tiers of local government. That is the entire point of us.

💡 Perhaps there's something you'd like us to ask, on your behalf? Put it in the comments and we will take it into the next meeting.

11/08/2026

Last summer a 90,000 sq ft electric motor headquarters was completed at Bicester Motion. And nearly a year later YASA teams are now on site, and is is operational!

The building cost 26.8 million pounds, was funded by Cain International and built by Kier. It is the first of five on a site Bicester Motion has named The Ranges, after the RAF rifle ranges that used to sit there. Four more buildings totalling 124,000 sq ft are planned.

Worth pausing on what that means for the town. Bicester now has a real cluster in electric propulsion. YASA has also taken a building at Catalyst Bicester on the A41, and Evolito, which spun out of YASA, has its headquarters on the same park.

Bicester Motion is one of our partner businesses sitting on our exec board. We are looking forward to watching the development of the next four buildings in The Ranges.

More info in comments.

Images via Bicester Motion

10/08/2026

What is Bicester Vision? We get businesses, councils and community organisations in Bicester into one room.

We are a community interest company and we have run on that model since 2007. In practice it looks like four partnership meetings a year, knowledge training workshops, and a fair amount of quiet introducing of one person to another.

Our exec board covers private business, all three tiers of local government and the third sector. And our partners Adalta Real, Tritax, Bicester Village, Bicester Motion, BRITA UK, EZ Charge, and Chiltern Railways, Siemens Healthineers, MOD Bicester, Bullingdon Prison, (and more) sit in the same room as Cherwell District Council, Oxfordshire County Council and Bicester Town Council.

A partnership meeting typically puts 50 to 70 businesses and community stakeholders in the room. That is the useful bit for our local businesses.

More at bicestervision.co.uk or contact the team on [email protected]

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http://www.bicestervision.co.uk/

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