Event Summary
Life Sciences Update | Summary, photos, and slides
The government wants the UK to become a science superpower. Place North West’s Life Sciences Update looked at the role the North West can play in achieving this goal as well as exploring the need for dynamic cities and pioneering buildings to address the significant shortfall in appropriate accommodation for innovative businesses.
Place’s Life Sciences Update was sponsored by MIX Manchester, Fairhursts Architects, and Morgan Sindall Construction.
Scroll to the bottom of the story for the event photo gallery.
A flagship offer
Colin Sinclair, chief executive officer of Sciontec, said Liverpool’s universities had created an amazing track record in research and development but “they had nowhere to put it”.
He said that’s where Sciontec comes in – bringing together the academic expertise, alongside the property industry knowledge of the likes of Bruntwood and Legal & General, plus the backing of government.
He said: “Liverpool has a great pharma cluster, but we don’t have the big occupiers. To get them, we need to tell them we can do something different.”
- Download Colin Sinclair’s presentation
However, there are obstacles in the way, he added.
“Liverpool’s rents are so much lower than Manchester that we have a viability gap on new construction.
“The only way we’ll get to change that cycle is to grow the businesses we’ve got and attract new ones around those specialisms. Leverage the power of the universities who produce great R&D and a massive talent pool for those occupiers.”
Sciontec’s Colin Sinclair said he would like to attract a company the size of Microsoft to Paddington Village. Credit: PNW
Professor Tim Jones, vice chancellor of the University of Liverpool, outlined plans to build an academic health sciences complex on the site of the former Royal Liverpool Hospital, where demolition will be complete by 2026.
He said this would be a “unique model” in the UK and added: “It’s a partnership between the University, the NHS trusts, industry, but also the local population. That’s really important because when we’re talking about life sciences and health, it’s the research and the innovation that you do that really matters. All the evidence around the world is when the research in health care is done on the local population, health outcomes are 20 to 30% better.
“It will be connected to the new university hospital. We will co-locate business, researchers, academics, NHS clinicians and we will have state of the art capabilities, including clinical trials. It will be genuinely new in the UK.”
The scheme has a hefty price tag. Jones estimated the first phase alone would cost £500m. A cocktail of funding from various sources will be required to get it built, he said.
The panel discussed the importance being placed on the social impact of the Knowledge Quarter. Credit: PNW
Creating an impact
Quizzed by Dan Whelan, deputy editor of Place North West, about social impact, Kate Bull, director of economic strategy for Liverpool City Council, discussed how the city’s Knowledge Quarter is on the edge of Islington and Kensington, two of the country’s most deprived areas.
She said: “It’s how we showcase the opportunities developments like this bring – the high-value jobs – and create those aspirations from primary school the whole way through into further and higher education and ensure the right pathways. It’s crucial. We’re just launching the skills programme that will really maximise that and take that holistic life span.”
That’s a view supported by the private sector, with Steven Gregory, area director for the North West at Morgan Sindall Construction, saying collaboration is key.
He added: “We’ve seen an increase in construction costs that none of us really expected. Our early engagement is really important to keep those costs down, to engage with the supply chain in a meaningful way.
“You need to go to the market with a clear definition of what’s needed and what’s expected, not just from a building point of view but also from a social impact and responsible business point of view.”
CBRE’s Joanne Henderson said VC funding for the life sciences sector has been in short supply. Credit: PNW
North-South divide?
Jones set out the disparity in the nation’s life sciences funding landscape.
In 2022, the government spent just £49m on clinical research infrastructure in the whole of the North of England, while the Crick Institute in London’s Kings Cross received £75m and the Wellcome Sangar Institute in Cambridge received over £100m.
Investment in the South East is “on a scale that dwarfs anything”, he said.
Dace Dimza-Jones, national life sciences inward investment specialist at the Department for Business and Trade, said there were reasons to be cheerful for the North West.
As a result of the Budget there is going to be “significant investment” in the National Institute for Health and Care Research, she said.
“That means we will be able to support big pharma and drive clinical trials here in the UK, but also support very small innovative companies,” Dimza-Jones explained.
“The more clinical activity we do here in the NHS, and with our academia, the more people will want to take up lab space and come out of Oxford and Cambridge and invest in Liverpool and Manchester.”
Joanne Henderson, executive director and head of life sciences for CBRE, added more perspective. She said: “The question [from companies] is, at the moment, ‘do we go to Europe, or do we go to the UK?’”
Her focus is on four areas. There’s scientific excellence, where “we punch way above our weight”, with Manchester in the top 30 globally. Then there’s the public sector – but with daunting comparisons to the US where £50bn a year goes into health and life sciences budgets.
Thirdly, the business environment, where she says “big pharma has not been overly impressed with the UK in the last few years”.
And, finally, private funding where “2024 has been a tough year for venture capital”. However, she added: “The last six weeks have seen 30% of the whole year’s VC funding in the UK. There’s a lot more positive sentiment in the market since we’ve stabilised political uncertainty.”
From left: Fairhursts’ Laura Sherliker, Track Real Estate’s Jamie Bottomley, CBRE’s Joanne Henderson, the Department for Business and trade’s Dace Dimza-Jones, and MIDAS’s Andrea Winders. Credit: PNW
Placemaking priorities
Laura Sherliker, architect and director at Fairhurst Architects, said the wider issue of placemaking was crucial to make the UK, and the North, more attractive to occupiers, and the talent pool: “It’s about thinking about what we’re building and creating communities and environments that people want to live and work in, [and] building better quality stock that people want to invest in.
“Oxford and Cambridge grow because it is this established ecosystem. We need to be investing to the same rates.”
Andrea Winders, head of inward investment for life sciences and healthcare at MIDAS, was just back from a fact-finding trip to Hyderabad and Singapore where she said: “The first thing that hits you in an innovation cluster is government investment.
“£520m for the whole of the UK [a figure reaffirmed in the recent Budget] is a drop in the ocean. I’m targeting international manufacturers – who are turning over billions of dollars every year to – come to Manchester.”
Jamie Bottomley, director at Track Real Estate, discussed Mix Manchester, the “globally- connected” strategic regeneration area around the airport, which will offer something different to the market.
“[It will be] complementary to the development pipeline on the Oxford Road Corridor, Alderley Park, places like that, as opposed to putting more of the same stock into the market”, he said.
He added: “Science companies, at the moment, have to go to any old industrial estate. They don’t get that curation and ecosystem.”
From left: LCRCA’s John Willis, LYVA Labs’ Lorna Green, Scitech Daresbury’s John Leake and Freeths’ Mark Alexander. Credit: PNW
In the zone – and beyond
From a mental health campus in Maghull to Glass Futures in St Helens, John Willis, programme lead for the Liverpool City Region innovation zone at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, outlined how the area’s £160m of government funding over 10 years would be spent.
His presentation said the city region is home to one of Europe’s largest pharma clusters and is the government’s “only high potential opportunity for vaccines and, with more than 7,000 volunteers, is a leader in clinical trials”.
He also described how the largest group of clinical hospitals outside London is driving advances in children’s health, cancer treatment, neurology, and mental health. He added: “£800m and 8,000 new jobs are forecasted over the 10 years.”
Lorna Green, chief executive and co-founder of LYVA Labs, said her organisation was “set up through a frustration of working with early-stage businesses trying to bring innovative solutions through to the NHS”.
She said: “There was no investor to give them the match funding and additional resources they needed. We launched the fund in 2022 and we’ve invested in 18 start-ups. No one has failed yet.
“£1.5m has leveraged £8m into those businesses.”
John Leake, business growth director at Sci-Tech Daresbury, said there was a big focus on city centres, around universities and teaching hospitals, to create clusters but said they will grow “where there is established capability”.
He outlined Scitech Daresbury’s facilities and particular strengths in AI and quantum computing as draws for industry.
He added: “The investment zone is starting to build momentum. Companies will need scalable laboratories and even pilot facilities as they move to pre manufacturing. That’s our sweet spot.”
He used the example of biosurfactant specialist Holiferm, which started out on the Daresbury campus and has now moved into production facility in Wallasey, describing it as a “North West success story”.
Asked what the innovation zone could learn from the South East’s golden triangle, Mark Alexander, legal director at Freeths, concluded: “A joined up approach, whether that’s mentorship schemes or digital collaborations.
“Having clusters, providing start-up and incubator space and being surrounded by those who’ve ‘been there, done it’. That’s what helped in the golden triangle.”
What’s next?
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Life sciences really developing in Manchester now right down the Oxford Rd corridor. The trick is to keep the incentives flowing which the city seems to be good at by building the infrastructure first. It’s going to have to accelerate if they are to overhaul the Oxford /Cambridge duo.
By Anonymous
How about the government backing AstraZeneca in Speke, and giving Liverpool some well paid jobs instead of always backing Mcr with jobs and buildings.
By Anonymous
Anonymous @ 1:20 AZ’s facility in Speke is more of a factory. The well paid research and development jobs were located in Alderley Park and grew out of ICI’s chemicals campus in Blakely, North Manchester. Unfortunately AZ relocated that function to Cambridge meant Manchester (the connurbation) was deprived of these jobs, largely as a consequence of government focussing public investment into Oxford and Cambridge over many years. That Bruntwood have managed to redevelop the site and attracted well paid jobs back there is testament to the great job they have done and the legacy of life sciences industry, academic and clinical research activity the Manchester area.
By Anonymous
Anonymous there is vaccine RnD at AZ Speke.
ICI’s pharma division largely grew out of the vast ICI RnD work in Runcorn and Cheshire, latterly concentrated at what is now The Heath although some types of activity used to take place in what was the ICI regional HQ for many years in the Cunard Building, Liverpool, prior to The Heath complex being built. The Heath was one of ICIs two main national research hubs at the time the other being Teesside.
ICI’s dyestuffs research in Blackley was just one of many ICI field specific research sites.
By ST
I’m pretty sure the Corridor in Oxford Road Corridor should be capitalised as it is both a place and an organisation.
By Anonymous
A great point. This story has been updated accordingly.
By Julia Hatmaker