Commercial Property In Stoke on Trent

Stoke on Trent is a city in Staffordshire which was officially ‘born’ on 31st March 1910, with the Federation of the Six Towns of Hanley, Burslem, Longton and Stoke, together with the districts of Tunstall and Fenton.

The city forms a horizontal 12-mile long Borough in the East Midlands, with a total area of 36 square miles.

Stoke on Trent, often abbreviated to Stoke, forms The Potteries Urban Area, and Stoke is considered to be the home of the pottery industry in England and is commonly known as The Potteries.

Since the 17th century, it was known exclusively for industrial-scale pottery manufacturing, synonymous with world-renowned names such as Royal Doulton, Spode and Wedgwood.

The city was, in the past, a centre for coal mining and iron and steel making; indeed Wolstanton Colliery in Stoke had the deepest mining shafts in Europe.

Nowadays, Stoke on Trent has become a centre for distribution companies and service industries, being located halfway between Manchester and Birmingham.

It is linked to the nearby M6 motorway at Junctions 15 and 16 by the A500 trunk road, and the A50 cuts right through the city linking it to both the M6 and M1 motorways.

A number of companies have built distribution centres here recently, due to road networks improvements.

The growth within this sector has provided the extra supply of commercial space to meet the increased demand for these types of units to let or to sell.

Showcase provides increased marketing exposure for those stakeholders looking for units to acquire in this sector.

There is a mainline railway station which makes up part of the Manchester to London west coast line. There are two other railway stations in the city. There is a bus station which runs both local and national long distance services.

Stoke has a canal system which has seen recent improvement works, and there are various bicycle paths across the city connecting it with Newcastle Under Lyme.

The city has 22 schools, although a major restructure of Stoke on Trent’s High School system is currently underway. There are four Higher Education institutions with Stoke on Trent college being one of the largest in the UK.

One of the UK’s best-known attractions, Alton Towers, is based around ten miles from Stoke on Trent, and the city boasts various other attractions including Trentham Gardens, which had a £100 million refurbishment in 2005.

Most of the pottery companies based in Stoke have visitor centres, including the £10 million Wedgwood Museum Visitor Centre which opened in 2008.

KPMG declared Stoke on Trent to be the most cost-effective place to set up a new business in 2004, due to the city’s large stock of affordable commercial properties and the excellent road and rail links.

Find Commercial Space in Stoke on Trent on Showcase

Showcase is an open access website where the general public can search for commercial space free of charge.

Showcase enables users to search a huge array of industrial, retail and office properties by type of unit, size, rent and price; it is essentially a one-stop shop to find commercial space in Stoke on Trent or beyond.

An Overview of Stoke on Trent Economy

The population of Stoke is almost 245,000. In the late 1980s and early 90s, the city was hard hit by the decline in the British manufacturing sector. A number of factories, potteries and steelworks were closed, which resulted in high rates of unemployment.

Currently, over 9,000 firms are based in the city, including the Michelin tyre company, which currently employs around 1,200 workers at its Stoke site.

Around 4,400 jobs are directly supported every year by the five million or so visitors to the city. Tourism is sustained by the many potteries and factory shops and tours, as well as the improved canal network.

With the Peak District nearby, the city is popular with walkers and, as well as five outdoor clothing shops in Stoke, there is also a main indoor shopping centre in Hanley, which supports many well-known high street retailers, as well as major coffee and restaurant chains.

The city has a cosmopolitan edge with various bars, restaurants, theatres, which have seen a boom in trading in recent times.

The site of an old colliery and other reclaimed land in Stoke is being planted as the Central Forest Park. Stoke-on-Trent was the site of the first National Garden Festival in 1985; the site was subsequently developed into the Festival Park, a business area where over 3,000 new jobs have been created.