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The Forum: Go-ahead for Gloucester's £107m campus plan

Reef Group The Forum, Gloucester, with a view to the city's cathedralReef Group
The city council hopes the new project could bring 1,000 new jobs to Gloucester

A £107m budget has been agreed for a new city centre digital campus which a council hopes will transform a district.

The Forum could bring 1,000 jobs, new office space and an innovation hub as part of efforts to revitalise Kings Quarter in Gloucester.

A councillor said the development would make nearby areas "as jealous as hell".

It will sit alongside a hotel, gym, restaurants, shops, bars, a multi-storey car park and apartments.

Gloucester City Council approved the budget for the plan at a meeting on Thursday.

Councillors also approved Reef Group as the authority's development partners for the project.

Reef Group How The Forum and Kings Quarter could look in GloucesterReef Group
Gloucester City Council approved the project's budget and agreed that it would work with Reef Group to complete it

The council said the digital campus and the Kings Quarter revamp would provide an "impressive gateway" into the city centre.

It said they will provide "very significant employment opportunities both in the short and longer term".

Conservative council leader Richard Cook said the "wonderful" improvements in Kings Quarter are "going ahead [at] full pace" and thanked other parties for their support, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

Liberal Democrat leader Jeremy Hilton said: "Whatever happens in the local election, the project is going to continue and it is not going to be messed up by party political point scoring.

"I do not think that has happened one bit on this.

"This will be something we will build and construct in Gloucester and the people in Cheltenham will be jealous as hell."