Eastern Powerhouse has launched a new report, titled Towards a Life Sciences Strategy for the East, to draw attention to the important clusters in Cambridge, Norwich and Stevenage and how they can form the basis for a regional Life Science Strategy, creating investment, jobs, and growth for the East of England and UK PLC.
Life sciences industries are one of the nation’s key strategic sectors where the UK has a clear longstanding strength and comparative advantage. It was worth over £94bn to the UK economy in 2021, a 9% increase on the year before, and projected to grow globally.
Life Sciences encompass a broad range of disciplines, technologies and businesses including, R&D intensive activities and manufacturing. In terms of the number of businesses and employees Life Science industries are relatively small compared to other sectors but they represent a disproportionately high share of the UK’s gross value added (GVA). In 2019 pharmaceutical products accounted for 3% of UK exports and 1% of total UK gross value added, this despite the pharmaceutical industry’s labour-intensive supply chain being in India or China. Smaller, but innovative, Life sciences industries (i.e. pharmaceuticals) accounted for 1 per cent of GVA (2019) and 1% of employment.
Key findings:
- The central provocation is that the life science sector needs a regional strategy that can maximise the opportunities that exist in the East. According to official sources, there are 1,007 life science business in the East of England, 13.3% of the UK total (7,599). Approximately 40% of all businesses in the East are located in Cambridge (406 companies).
- The relative proximity of Cambridge, Norwich, Stevenage and the confluence of advances in science and technologies, provides the opportunity to explore the inter-related scientific, technology and industrial development of the eastern region of the UK.
- We need to explore a strategy for the related and complementary industrial development of the eastern region as a whole. Examples of ‘spillover’ from Cambridge include downstream drugs manufacturing, re-applying expertise in genomics to the agri-sector, or deep knowledge in biological sciences to the green economy.
- Local plans must identify and prioritise commercial sites to provide more and better lab space. Local transport plans need to provide better connectivity between research parks and rural towns and villages. Local skills improvement plans must prioritise education and training pathways into new industries.
- Collaboration must be the driving purpose.