STEM Workshops in Stafford & Cannock

Stafford's industrial story includes footwear. Bostock's, founded by the cobbler Thomas Bostock, grew into works run by his sons in Stafford, Stone and Northampton that merged in 1919 to form Lotus, whose Sandon Road factory in Stafford, built in 1903, was demolished in 1998. Heavy electrical engineering arrived alongside it: Siemens Brothers built the Lichfield Road works in 1901 to 1903, which passed to English Electric in 1920, then GEC, GEC Alsthom and Alstom, and transformers are still made there today. To the east, the Cannock Chase coalfield was raising over 5 million tons of coal a year by 1933; Littleton Colliery, its last working pit, closed in 1993.

Francis William Webb was born in 1836 at Tixall Rectory near Stafford and returned to Crewe in 1871 to take charge of locomotive building for the London and North Western Railway, later as its chief mechanical engineer. He designed successive classes of locomotives for the LNWR, including the Experiment class, and his compound locomotive system divided opinion among fellow engineers at the time. George Nelson became managing director of English Electric in 1930 and served as its chairman from 1933 until his death at the company's Stafford works in 1962, as the workforce grew from 4,000 to 80,000; President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1955, he was created Baron Nelson of Stafford in 1960.

GE took over the historic Lichfield Road works in 2015 and, as GE Vernova, still makes HVDC converter transformers there, while its nearby Redhill site makes HVDC and FACTS valves; in 2024 the company announced an expansion of both Stafford facilities, with around 600 new UK jobs planned from 2023 to the end of 2025. A newer name has joined them: Hill Helicopters, formed in 2020, designs and builds its HX50 helicopter and its own GT50 turbine engine in Stafford. Nearer Cannock, the former coal-fired Rugeley power station, which once burned Cannock Chase coal, is being redeveloped: in 2025 Vistry bought the site to deliver 2,300 homes, an all-through school and commercial space.

Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group, which has a campus in Stafford, works with around 850 employers across Staffordshire and neighbouring areas on apprenticeships including construction and engineering. Staffordshire University's Centre for Health Innovation, also in Stafford, trains nurses, midwives and paramedics using clinical simulation suites. Employers add direct routes of their own: GE Vernova said in 2024 it was hiring hundreds of engineers and skilled staff locally for its Stafford expansion, and Hill Helicopters offers apprenticeships in Stafford with on-the-job training in manufacturing, composites, assembly and quality.