LAST week I took a tour of the Gloucestershire Science and Technology Park situated on the banks of the Severn alongside the old Berkeley power station. It was great to see how its developed since my last visit – as well as the college, the park hosts some incredible businesses working on cutting edge green technology.

It reminded me that although to the casual visitor passing through, they might see Stroud district as a place of fields and hills, hamlets and sleepy market towns, in fact we’ve got more small and medium sized businesses than any other part of the county, with advanced manufacturing a significant part of the local economy.

Just to confirm my thinking, at the end of last week SDC played host (virtually) to the first meeting of the Local Strategic Partnership since the start of the current crisis.

We heard from locally-based engineering company Renishaw, and how it played its part in the UK Ventilator Challenge national consortium – thousands of components for ventilators were manufactured at Renishaw’s South Wales and Stonehouse sites.

What also marks out our district is our amazing community spirit and we heard at the same LSP meeting from many of our local organisations have been working to support communities throughout the crisis, housing rough sleepers, supporting our elderly residents, and getting food and meals out to people’s homes.

As we face the uncertainty of the coming winter months, we will all need to keep our energy and spirits up to keep this community spirit going, even when we feel weary of the crisis.

Be aware of any communications not addressed personally to you or websites not using the gov.uk. If you have any concerns contact revenue.services@stroud.gov.uk. We do have a support scheme for anyone on benefits struggling to pay their Council Tax.