Background & Economy

Pictures Courtesy of South Somerset District Council

Yeovil is a vibrant market town situated at the Southern boundary of Somerset. In terms of the economy and employment it is best known as the home of Westlands Helicopters and the RNAS Yeovilton airbase. Yeovil is also known because of Yeovil Town Football Club, which since its entry to League 2 is making a significant economic contribution to the town.

For more information about Yeovil visit www.yeoviltown.com and for more about its business community visit www.yeovilchamber.org.

The Yeovil Vision has been worded as ‘the heart of the country… and the mind of a city’. The Vision for the town over the next 20 years has identified four strategic objectives:

• Diversify the economy
• Improve transport connections
• Broaden the range of retail and leisure
• Change the image

The Yeovil Steering Group for the Market Towns Employment Project is constituted as a Project Group under the Yeovil Vision and reports directly to the Something Happened Group, which is the group responsible for the implementation of the Yeovil Vision. The work that the Market Towns Employment Project group is undertaking supports the strategic objective of the Vision to diversify the economy.

The baseline analysis of the employment situation and economy in Yeovil identified:

• 23,421 jobs in 2002 with a 4% Employment Growth between 1998 and 2002
• 1,430 businesses in 2002 with a 2% increase since 1998
• High rates of economic activity
• Reliance on large firms with more than 200 employees, equivalent to 42% of jobs
• High reliance on manufacturing equivalent to 29% of jobs
• Low growth forecast in working age population
• Two of the top five employers are in declining sectors representing 4,700 jobs
• Recent losses of knowledge based jobs equivalent to an 18% reduction
• Low rates of unemployment but a high proportion of the unemployed are long term unemployed
• Poor Key stage 2 and GCSE results