CP1603-18 North Devon Enterprise Centre - Centre Operator

Devon County Council is developing a new Enterprise Centre to serve Northern Devon to support the start-up and growth of innovative small businesses with high growth potential. An essential part of this is the engagement of an expert operator to both manage the facility and provide on-site and outreach business support services.

The Enterprise Centre is forecast to open in early 2020 as the flagship development for the planned new Roundswell South Business Park. The site is owned by the County Council and occupies a high-profile location off the A39 on the outskirts of Barnstaple (the main urban centre for northern Devon), close to an established commercial area.

Working closely with a local stakeholder group, including the two District Councils, Petroc FE/HE College and business leaders, the County Council has developed the project to planning. The ethos of the proposal is to offer a high-quality environment with tailored support to enable the target business audience to collaborate, learn, grow and thrive.

Following an encouraging market demand assessment, and with funding1 and planning permission pending, the Council are embarking on an open and transparent soft market testing exercise to help establish the most attractive way of packaging and scoping a potential future procurement opportunity for the lease of the Centre to an operator. As a key part of this, the workshop will be a half-day Devon County Council is taking an outcome-focussed approach and envisages leasing the building with a high degree of flexibility/devolved control to the operator, subject to the delivery of contracted outputs and adherence to the requirements of the funders (including European Regional Development Fund).