“Clinical Partners is a great example of how rural locations can be extremely successful, and the working from home revolution has only enhanced that as we now travel less to the office, reducing our overall carbon footprint.”

We spoke to Barny Guthrie, CEO, and Jonathan Edwards, Marketing Director, of Clinical Partners, a provider of a wide range of mental health services throughout the UK for individuals and families, either through private self-referral or on behalf of the NHS.

What made you decide to locate in the region?

“Clinical Partners was drawn to locate in Wiltshire by the quality of life for our employees of working in such a beautiful setting.  This translates into hard business benefits, where employee satisfaction and retention are high”

 

Tell us about your workforce.

“We are a fast growing provider to NHS commissioners nationwide as well as looking after thousands of private self referring patients.  Central to our offering is our Triage team of qualified, or in-training, psychologists.  We also have an admin team, HR, and marketing.  Many of our employees are local.  We have an informal training programme for staff and have a relationship with Bournemouth University.  Our location gives us the ability to recruit high quality candidates over a wide geographic area.”

Where are you based?

“We were able to secure high quality modern office space in a development of what were historically agricultural buildings, and the quality of the space and fibre optic connectivity has been outstanding.  We are working with our landlord to discuss how his and our expansion plans will work.”

 

What assistance and support did you receive when you came here?

“Health Tech is a growth sector and we are developing our digital platform to drive growth and increase accessibility to quality mental health care.  We decided against private equity and instead applied and were successful in obtaining a £250,000 loan from SWLEP to drive the next stage of our expansion.  We have received outstanding support throughout from SWLEP”.

How has the business grown since you came to Swindon and Wiltshire?

“Our revenues have increased by several million pounds in the last 10 years and our headcount has increased by around 30 staff.”

 

What has surprised you about the region?

“We have been surprised how easily we have managed to attract and retain employees as we scale up.”