A rural office development near Castle Howard in the North Yorkshire countryside might not be the first location you'd think of to run a successful traceability and communications business. But with its good transport links and peaceful location, new business premises at Welburn Park between York and Malton are helping local IT company Longhand Data to do just that. Acquired by York-based property development and investment company The Helmsley Group, Welburn Park was originally a 6,500 sq ft office space. Helmsley has now divided the space into five smaller offices of between 850 sq ft and 1,600 sq ft, responding to a growing trend for small businesses to purchase rather than rent their workspace, or shorter leases to allow expansion in the future. After spending the majority of his career in agriculture, Roger Young recognised a need for better traceability and communication within the sector and decided to set up his own business. Through a joint venture with the Leavesley Group, Roger set up Longhand Data Ltd, a data collection and processing business. Roger comments: "Longhand Data produces digital pen platforms for use by companies in the agricultural and food-chain markets. We produce data collection forms that can be used by farm staff, farm auditors and others collecting data on farms. The forms are completed using a digital pen - an ordinary looking pen that writes with a ball-point cartridge as normal. But each pen also contains a camera and electronics to send captured handwriting via Bluetooth to mobile phones and on to our servers where machine readable text is extracted and used to automatically populate our customers' databases. Users don't need to be technically proficient they just need to be able to write and use a mobile phone. "We don't need or want to be based in a city so Welburn Park was the perfect place to be. Not many people can say they have a cracking view to look at while at work and we are really impressed with the warm and cosy feel of the office space." Ian McAndrew, associate director at The Helmsley Group, said: "Welburn Park provides small individual office buildings for people, like Roger, who feel it is more financially viable to own rather than rent business premises. It is in a rural location just off the A64 near Castle Howard, with lovely views and good on-site parking with other established businesses close by, so it's a proven commercial centre. For further information visit www.welburnpark.com or contact the agents Savills on 0113 244 0100 or McBeath Property Consultancy on 01653 697767.