Marks & Spencer is to open a Simply Food store in Swindon, creating around 70 jobs. The 9,000 sq ft store Mannington Retail Park will sell more than 4,500 quality food and drink lines, including fresh produce, meats, beers, wines and spirits. It will also include a deli, a 48-seat café selling Fairtrade hot drinks,...
Expanding property law firm Hoffman Male is taking on more staff as it starts to benefit from the housing market recovery. The firm is seeking two conveyancers – one each for its offices in Swindon and Bristol – to help with a growing caseload linked to the higher number of prospective homebuyers entering the...
Swindon’s Menzies Hotel has been closed down with the loss of all 49 jobs following the sale of its parent company. The town centre hotel, is one of three that are not being taken over by the hotel chain’s new owners Topland Group. The other hotels to be closed are at Gatwick and Luton....
The in-house magazine produced by Hills, the Marlborough-based waste, recycling and housebuilding group, has landed a major regional PR award. intouch won gold in the Best Internal Publication category in the 2013 South West Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) PRide Awards, staged last Friday in Bristol. More than 220 guests attended the black-tie...
Swindon’s rapidly-recovering industrial property market has received a major boost from Network Rail, which has signed a deal to occupy one of the town’s largest vacant warehouses. The railway infrastructure group, which owns and manages the UK’s rail network, is to use the 150,000 sq ft building on the town’s Groundwell Industrial Estate as...
Wiltshire College’s ambitious plans for a £21m state-of-the-art campus in Chippenham are to go on display to the public tomorrow. The 9,100 sq m three-storey building on land behind the existing college buildings in Cocklebury Road could provide a new purpose-built campus for town. According to Wiltshire College, the new facilities would support growth...
Swindon interior door manufacturer Vicaima has supplied its products to one of London’s largest housing regeneration projects. The Portuguese-owned firm, which makes a range of doors at its Greenbridge factory, was chosen by Sussex construction firm Rydon to supply 520 doors for new homes on the 1960s Packington Estate in Islington. Some 538 flats...
Hotels in the Swindon area are slowly recovering from the economic downturn but are continuing to underperform compared to the rest of the country, according to a new survey. The latest quarterly hotel report by accountants BDO shows Swindon hotels achieved an annual rise in room yield – the way the industry measures revenue...
Paul Whitmarsh, founder of Swindon commercial property agents Whitmarsh Lockhart, has been awarded the coveted title of the Most Active Deal Maker in Wiltshire’s property market. The award is sponsored by the trade magazine Estates Gazette and awarded to the commercial agent responsible for undertaking the most commercial property transactions during 2012/2013. Paul, pictured,...
The housing market recovery and new product launches helped underlying profits soar by 155% to £332m at Nationwide, the Swindon-based building society. Pre-tax profits also climbed – to £270m from £103m – for the six months to September 30 while gross mortgage lending rose 37% to £14bn. It opened more than 214,000 new current...
