Gloucester Services

CASE STUDY

Summary

Gloucester Services, which fully opened in 2015, is a 80/20 partnership between us, the Westmorland Family, and Gloucestershire Gateway Trust, a charity set up specifically for the project. The charity receives over £500k each year from the business, which is invested directly into local community projects.

As Tatton Services will be to Cheshire, Gloucester Services is a celebration of Gloucestershire, through its building and landscape, its customer offer and its people and community. Built on a landscape sensitive greenfield site, the site has been sculpted to conceal the car parks and cars from the surrounding elevated areas, while the buildings, which won a national RIBA (Royal Institute of Architects) award, are grass covered with a heavy timber interior. The Farmshop & Kitchen showcases the unique and abundant local produce of the area, in beautifully designed surroundings.

Gloucester Services employs circa 400 people, a number of whom were previously long term unemployed.

A report was prepared by Regeneris in 2018 to identify the key outputs and impacts of Gloucester Services. The headlines are presented here:

click here to download the full Regeneris report

Gloucester Services has received a number of awards, some of which are presented here:

Planning Process

The Gloucester Services site is landscape sensitive, being immediately adjacent to the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to the south and east and to Robinswood Hill to the north, creating elevated views from which the motorway service area could be seen.

In response, we developed a landscape led design approach to minimise the impact of the motorway service area in its setting. We did this through careful orientation of the building and site, by creating green roofs over the main facilities building and petrol forecourt and by creating bunding and tree planting to minimise the views from elevated points. Through a Sustainable Urban Drainage System and working closely with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, we have also significantly improved the biodiversity on the site.

We undertook significant community consultation before building Gloucester Services, both formal and informal. This helped us develop early partnerships with key stakeholders, which was vital to achieving the social, economic and environmental impact we set out to achieve. It also enabled a more efficient planning determination period of 12 months. Gloucester Services was the first motorway service area in the UK to be granted planning permission by a Local Planning Authority.

Early Artist Interpretation of Gloucester Services