COMMERCIAL property specialist VSL & Partners is celebrating its 15-year anniversary, and its impressive record as a top performer.

Staff are toasting a period that has seen the firm remain the number one Oxfordshire agency in its field for eight years.

Established in 2002 with a team of 10, the Kidlington-based firm now employs the largest commercial property agency team in the area.

The team has representation on about 40 per cent of deals completed across central Oxford and the A34 Innovation Knowledge Corridor in southern Oxfordshire.

Richard Venables, director at VSL, said: “We have enjoyed an immensely active and successful 15 years since VSL was founded in 2002.

“Despite the global financial crisis, we managed to stay strong, which is testament to the success of our strategy to remain a niche independent agency, committed to doing business in Oxfordshire.”

In a market that is dominated by national agents VSL has been ranked as the most active agent and dealmaker of the year by leading property publication Estates Gazette Interactive for the past eight years. The team continues to create value for clients by combining industry acumen with detailed local market intelligence and research.

Across Oxfordshire, VSL completed deals in the industrial, office, retail, land and investment sectors involving 767,000 sq ft of space from June 2016 to July 2017 for its clients. A large percentage of these transactions were with companies in the flourishing science and technology sector, which in 2017 accounted for 70 per cent of total industrial take-up in the county.

Oxfordshire is experiencing a growth period in the science and technology market with new companies relocating to the area and with the emergence of a secure and substantial funding base for Oxford University spin-out companies.

The continued provision of this funding will be key to future growth in the science and tech sector emerging from Oxford – with the city taking steps to enable spin-out companies to flourish, including the creation of The Oxford Foundry.

According to Nesta’s State of Small Business report, Oxford is one of the only two non-London boroughs in the UK’s top 10 for inward venture capital investment.

The report also found South Oxfordshire has one of the highest five-year ‘survival rates’ for small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK.

And Oxford’s technology sector helped it into second place behind London in a ranking of UK cities total economic output, according to the latest UK Powerhouse report by Irwin Mitchell.

For further information about the firm visit vslandp.com