8 innovative science and technology parks in the South East
Across the UK there are more than 130 science parks. Often clustered around the country’s top universities (such as the Universities of Oxford, Warwick and Bristol), they are also attracting increased investment from commercial and institutional investors which recognise the economic, social and investment value of science parks.
Science parks also support the local economies where they are based as they grow to meet the needs of the people that work there. This further boosts local employment thanks to cafes, shops, gyms, preschool nurseries, hotels and accommodation and transport links.
Here we look at eight science and technology parks that are leading the way when it comes to creating an innovative environment for their occupants.
Discovery Park is an ecosystem and community thriving in collaboration. Across 220 acres, it has created a flourishing life sciences and technology campus home to global players including Pfizer, as well as innovative start-ups.
Discovery Park recognises that start-ups are the lifeblood of the life sciences community and is prepared to take risks on these businesses by offering pay-as-you-grow models with significantly reduced rent plans to support companies in their infancy.
Through its Skills Hub, it acts as a conduit bringing academia and industry together to support research and data needs and its new Incubator facility - 50,000 sq ft of wet labs and workspaces - is enabling start-ups to become established.
Discovery Park is also home to a Barclays Eagle Lab, one of the largest co-working and incubator networks for start-ups and scale-ups in the UK, which supports entrepreneurs and ambitious businesses to collaborate, innovate and grow. Through Discovery Park Ventures, it is forging ahead with investments in early-stage life science and technology companies, allowing them to scale at speed.
Discovery Park is continuing to expand its focus beyond the Golden Triangle and is building collaborative links with the Knowledge Quarter at St Pancras, home to The Crick Institute and Digital Catapult. The opening of the new Thanet Parkway station this Spring will bring these and other collaborators within a 1 hour train journey from its campus in Kent.
THE OXFORD SCIENCE PARK, OXFORD
One of Europe’s leading science parks, The Oxford Science Park, is majority owned by Magdalen College Oxford in partnership with global investor GIC.
Last November, the park announced the next step in its development plan with the submission of a detailed planning application for a new laboratory and office building on Plot 27. The new building, which will comprise more than 75,000 sq ft of laboratory and office facilities, is expected to complete at the beginning of 2025.
The Park is already home to 3,350 people and more than 70 businesses from start-ups to major international companies.
In January the park acquired the Hinshelwood Building. The 31,581 sq ft building is located at the centre of the park. That transaction was part of The Oxford Science Park’s ongoing investment programme, providing the support infrastructure for growing companies as they address global health and environmental challenges. This programme also includes six new R&D buildings, occupying more than 600,000 sq ft, to be constructed over the next three years. The first of these is The Iversen Building (86,000 sq ft), Oxford’s first speculative lab-ready building, which is expected to complete this summer.
Planning approval has also recently been granted for three new state-of-the-art laboratory and office buildings at the park. The 400,000 sq ft scheme, the first stage of which is expected to complete by the end of next year, provides significant grow-on space for the Park’s occupiers as well as new companies from the global life sciences sector.
Milton Park is home to 250 companies and more than 9,000 people, many of them working on translating science innovation into commercial products and services. But what Milton Park identified a few years ago was that it’s not enough for science parks to offer lab and office space to help attract the skilled people its tenants expect, the park must provide first class travel and community facilities for the people that work there.
Over the last few years, as part of its 2040 vision for Milton Park, owner MEPC is investing in a comprehensive range of amenities alongside its continued development of office and laboratory space, from sustainable transport to new cycle and footpaths, all wrapped up in extensive investment in biodiversity projects.
Alongside this work, work is ongoing on the development of a new tech box scheme.
The scheme, to be named Nebula, has been designed with space, technology, life science and engineering companies in mind, promoting the growth of start-ups and cross-industry collaboration within the science and technology community.
The development will comprise a total gross internal area of just under 80,000 sq ft, featuring seven new research and development workspaces ranging from 6,000 sq ft up to a single building of 30,000 sq ft.
HARWELL SCIENCE AND INNOVATION CAMPUS, DIDCOT
Harwell campus is a collaboration between government, academia and industry. A number of major UK scientific are based on the campus, such as the National Quantum Computing Centre and the Central Laser Facility, anchor organisations like the European Space Agency, innovative private sector organisations like Oxford Nanopore and Astroscale alongside teams from 30 UK universities.
The campus is managed and developed by a group of organisations – the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the UK Atomic Energy Authority and a private sector investor, Brookfield. It is investing significantly in the campus to add homes, facilities and more R&D space.
Last year Harwell became part of the Advance Research Clusters (ARC) network. This is an alliance of innovation campuses funded by Brookfield in the UK and Europe. The network provides membership who work at the campus, including free events, discounts and access to space at other ARC campuses.
Brookfield has five million square feet of development potential planned across the UK’s Golden Triangle, with three million square feet planned at the 700-acre Harwell site.
ARC OXFORD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PARK, OXFORD
With demand for lab space in Oxfordshire reaching almost 860,000 square feet, late last year Brookfield launched ARC Oxford, which was previously Oxford Technology Park.
Brookfield, which also manages Harwell Campus, is set to invest more than £1 billion into Oxfordshire by latter years of the decade. Plans being considered could see the current 514,000 square feet Oxford City space double in size as it brings new laboratories, cleanrooms, offices and R&D facilities to the campus.
Brookfield acquired Oxford Business Park in 2021 and has already speculatively redeveloped, refurbished and let around 60,000 square feet of space geared towards life sciences lab space.
SOUTHAMPTON SCIENCE PARK, SOUTHAMPTON
A report by policy and economics consultancy London Economics has found that the University of Southampton contributed £4.14 billion to the UK economy in the 2020-21 academic year.
The report highlights the role that Southampton Science Park plays in attracting talent and investment to the region. The Science Park itself delivers an estimated £350 million in gross value added to the local economy.
Professor Mark Spearing, Vice-President (Research and Enterprise) at the University of Southampton, said: “We welcome this report which not only underlines the University’s importance to the UK economy but across the world.
“More than that, it demonstrates the far-reaching impact our research and enterprise has, leading on innovation and nurturing talent for the future. More directly, the huge impact we have on our host city Southampton, especially as our region emerges from the effects of the pandemic.”
SURREY RESEARCH PARK, GUILDFORD
The year 2022 was a good one for Surrey Research Park.
The park, which was established in 1985 and is owned and operated by the University of Surrey, reported high occupancy, averaging 97 per cent, throughout the year and currently has 70,000 sq ft of new development under discussion.
Despite economic uncertainty, Grant Bourhill, CEO, Surrey Research Park, said outlook for the park remains cautiously optimistic due to the breadth and quality of innovative companies at Surrey Research Park with clusters overlapping Government’s priority areas, namely space; sustainability; animal and human health; and digital.
In his review of 2022, Grant says there are many achievements by companies based on the park to celebrate. From new RNA delivery mechanisms, to managing clinical trials of Lecanemab, hailed as a “historic moment” in Alzheimers treatment. From building new satellites, to changing the way animal cancer is treated and developing a global atlas of environmental DNA data, to FDA approval for early-stage cancer detection.
In its first development since 2014, Alliance Medical opened a cancer screening facility, containing a digital PET-CT scanner, one of only two in the UK. This will be used to improve health outcomes locally, in addition to research on cancer and dementia with the university, the Royal Surrey County Hospital and the National Physical Laboratory. The park continues to strengthen links between businesses based on the park with the University, for research collaboration and student talent flow, with a Working Group comprising tenants and university colleagues helping drive this initiative.
KENT SCIENCE PARK, SITTINGBOURNE
Kent Science Park is home to one of the UK’s largest communities of agritech, biotech and biopharma businesses.
Set in 65 acres of beautiful grounds, the biotech incubator is made up of high specification labs, office and coworking spaces across 47 buildings.
The site is just one of nine fully integrated sciences parks owned, developed and operated by The Pioneer Group, which also offers accelerator programmes and an internal VC fund, to help occupiers turn their ideas into reality.
Last year the company published a UK Life Science Start Up report in association with property consultants JLL.
The report highlighted the continued growth in the number of life science start-ups in the UK, which has increased by 24 per cent in the five years from 2016 to 2020. It says this rise is thanks to more investment in start-ups, the impact of cluster development and a growth in the available of space for early-stage companies.
A lack of space, it says, hinders growth in a particular location, while space coming on stream can boost these numbers. Further underpinning the growth of start-ups has been the increasing breadth and sophistication of accelerators and other company start-up support. The Pioneer Group, for example, now operates its accelerators across much of the UK.
