NEW LIFE SCIENCES DISTRICT IN OXFORD GETS GO-AHEAD

Oxford North, a new £500 million urban district for the city, is to go ahead after Thomas White Oxford, the development company of St John’s College which owns the land, secured the green light in March.

Thomas White Oxford plans to build new laboratories and workspaces for biomedical science, homes, public parks and neighbourhood shops on land between the A34, A40 and the A44 near Wolvercote.

All of which, it hopes, will help attract and retain much-needed global science research talent and help boost the region’s economy.

Oxford and the surrounding area is one of Europe’s most successful life sciences clusters.

It has a strong track record in establishing and attracting world leading life sciences businesses, but many in the life sciences sector, along with the real estate professionals they task with finding space, have long complained of a shortage of quality lab and office accommodation to meet demand.

The plans for Oxford North, which have been a long time in the making and caused consternation among some Wolvercote residents, will go some way to help. The planning approval is for outline consent for the overall 64-acre masterplan to provide 4,500 new jobs across around 936,500 sq ft of laboratories and offices.

There will also be 480 new houses, of which a minimum of 35 per cent will be affordable, small shops, bars and restaurants, a hotel, around 23 acres of open spaces and significant investment into the walking, cycling, bus and highway networks.

Thomas White Oxford estimates that when complete, Oxford North will boost the economy by around £150 million per year.

Detailed consent has been granted for the first phase of development in the central area, which will provide 140,000 sq ft of laboratories and office space in three buildings. These include Red Hall, a workspace with the capacity for up to 300 people, which will aim to attract spin-outs from both Oxford Universities and two connected laboratory and workspace buildings totalling 55,000 sq ft each over four floors.

The first phase of a new public park will also get under-way soon.

Plans for the first phase of new homes on the western Canalside portion of the site will be submitted this summer.

Professor Andrew Parker, at St John’s College said: “The College is heavily committed to creating a place, not just to facilitate life-enhancing science and technology discoveries, but a new district of Oxford where people want to live, visit and learn.”

Oxford needs this development if it is to realise its ambition to be a serious global technology hub, according to Richard Venables at property consultancy, VSL & Partners.

He said: “Oxford Business Park and Oxford Science Park are filling quickly, fuelled by demand from the science and tech sectors and future development land is likely to be exhausted in the next five years, so the opportunities around Oxford are becoming increasingly limited.

“We have seen Oxford University spin-out companies going from Series A to Series C funding in rapid steps, and if Oxford and the wider area is to retain these companies rather than seeing them relocate to other areas of the country, or worse, other countries, we need to be able to offer them top quality space to grow.”

Another area of Oxford which could potentially meet this need is Osney Mead. The University of Oxford is leading a team of stakeholders in planning an innovation quarter on this currently rundown industrial estate.

The new estate would include research, commercial space and residential development, primarily for university use.