Surrounded by nature on all sides, the Forest of Dean's Speech House Hotel has long taken its commitment to the environment and sustainability seriously — upgrading to green infrastructure like a biomass boiler and EV charging points for guests over the years.
Having already sought guidance on everything from marketing to IT training from the county's business support network, The Growth Hub Gloucestershire, the family-run business reached out again recently for help taking its commitment further, by fulfilling its key aim of being powered by renewable energy from solar panels on its roof.
SoGlos sits down with the hotel's director, Naomi Hands, to find out how The Growth Hub has helped the business to achieve that and more — from providing innovative tools for monitoring emissions, to facilitating 'game changing' connections.
Naomi, tells us a bit about The Speech House Hotel and your journey to leading the business.
The Speech House is a 17th century hunting lodge that was built by King Charles II in 1669, it's a Grade II-listed building that's been an integral part of the Forest of Dean's history — it means a lot of things to lots of different people in the local area.
In the 1800s it gradually became more and more of a hotel. My family took over in 2010, so we've been running it for 15 years. Over the years we've been working to develop it and really change the reputation of it in the area.
We have two restaurants — a fine dining restaurant with two AA Rosettes and our Orangery restaurant — along with 35 bedrooms and wedding and conference facilities. We host big community events here out on our field, like the popular Forest Food Showcase, fireworks displays — there's loads going on, we're a bit of everything to everyone really.
Personally, I grew up in hospitality, working at various hotels that my parents had at the time. I then went off to uni, studying journalism at Cardiff and as soon as that was over, I moved to London and had a very different career, before coming back.
I worked in media and advertising for 10 years, working my way up through agencies, looking after commercial partnerships. I ended at Global, which owns radio stations like Classic FM and Heart, in their digital audio division; monetising third party content like SoundCloud and then setting up their podcast advertising division, with the ad tech they'd been building.
Then Covid happened; and I decided I'd had enough of London. I wanted a change of lifestyle and I'd been toying with the idea of coming back to take over the family business prior to moving to Global, so it all sort of worked out timing wise. So I moved back and took over business here.
How long has the business been working with The Growth Hub – what kind of help or guidance were you seeking in the first instance?
We've been working with The Growth Hub since the beginning — it's a really great resource for training, for anything from marketing and how to build a business, to things like how to use Excel. It offers a real variety and I believe that you can always learn something, even if you think you know everything.
How has The Growth Hub helped you to achieve your goals?
We've always had sustainability underpinning our business here, for many reasons — because of our location, because of the building, because of global warming, the current situation around energy costs — but mainly because we're at the epicentre of the forest, we have to take it seriously if we want to have a business in the future.
So when The Growth Hub offered a couple of courses on sustainability, mum went along and got talking to its experts. Between that and our connection with the Forest Economic Partnership, before The Growth Hub started offering their own carbon audits, we were put in touch with a company called Sustainable Direction.
They came and had a long chat with us and looked at our current state of play — we have a biomass boiler that we installed in 2014, various EV charging points etc. But they came in and said 'okay well, this is where you're at — let's measure your output of electricity; let's measure your water rates; let's look at everything and work out what your energy consumption is'. They then completed a report for us with recommendations; and introduced us to companies who could implement those recommendations.
The report suggested working with a company called the Big Solar Co-operative. They came and looked at setting up solar panels on the building and two and a half years later, we have them. So it's all those conversations and introductions, made through The Growth Hub, that helped us get to that point.
Solar panels was something that we'd wanted for a very long time, but weren't able to get them because of the cost — also getting it through planning in the Forest of Dean was quite challenging, partly because we're a listed building. Having access to the Big Solar Co-operative was game changing.
The Growth Hub has also introduced us to a cloud-based platform that integrates with accounting software and various other things, to actually workout what your carbon emissions are; and we've worked with them through the training of that as well. So The Growth Hub has been very involved and has held our hand throughout each step of the journey.
How will The Speech House continue its sustainability journey into the future — and how will you connect with The Growth Hub moving forwards?
We're in a really strong place at the moment — 97 per cent of all of our waste is recycled, so very little of it is going to landfill, but there's always more that we could do to recycle and upcycle; things like that. Starting to source produce locally is a real push for us at the moment, along with exploring options for having our own kitchen garden.
Having access to the data and understanding what net zero means, what your carbon footprint is and how do you reduce that — for us, a huge piece we have to do is around the education of guests, customers staying with us, people visiting the area. I think this year there will be a big focus on how do we communicate the work that we're doing and share the knowledge to help other people do even the smallest things themselves.
We've also been invited to present our sustainability journey at a Growth Hub event in Cirencester next month. So we'll be sharing our knowledge, case studies and best practises with other people, to be able to take them to different Growth Hub locations and share that knowledge.
What has impressed you most about working with The Growth Hub?
The support that they've given us — without them, we wouldn't have been able to achieve things like solar panels because we couldn't afford them as a business. The Growth Hub has shown us that it doesn't have to cost a fortune. Also understanding how to monitor our carbon footprint — there's no way we would have even known how to begin that without their support.
They're always open — it doesn't matter what questions you have, they'll have an
answer. They're so well versed on so many different things, from business and admin through to
finance, cyber security and sustainability. Any areas you want to explore as a business, they'll have resources and connections and
people to talk to within those areas. It's an untapped goldmine of knowledge — I'd advise anyone to go and have a chat
with them.
