It’s great news that the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor is back on the agenda, but how can we make sure it stays there? We need to make sure there’s something for local communities as well as international investors, say Liz Sparrow and Nick Stafford at Ridge

We work with clients across the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, in academia, industry and everything in between, including the residential development required to support these uses, and we’ve seen how powerful the clustering effect can be for driving momentum and success.

So it’s very positive that the government has pushed development in this region back up the agenda, seeking to make it an economic engine for the whole of the country. By coordinating action between local and national planning authorities, businesses and universities, the aim is to attract inward investment and make the UK a global destination for companies in cutting-edge fields such as AI, life sciences and semiconductors.

From a planning point of view, the key question is how exactly the government will leverage the corridor’s existing strengths to deliver more for the UK as a whole. Funding is important, but it’s not the biggest challenge – ultimately, it takes leadership to get ideas like this off the ground, backed by cohesive, joined-up policymaking.

In Science Minister Lord Vallance, it does have an appointed “Innovation Champion” at a senior level. The new National Planning Policy Framework also emphasises regional thinking and cross-boundary working, although it stops short of bringing back regional planning. The concern is that the growth corridor remains vulnerable to the same political cycles that led the previous government to scrap the OxCam Arc in 2022.

Developers don’t have to sit back and wait for a favourable context to materialise. They need to make it clear that there is an appetite for significant investment, and play an active part in decision-making around the policies and framework to support it. Crucially, we need to articulate the contribution that science park developments can make to the local economy, and how projects will create wider benefits and onward investment.
 

Winning over local communities

Last time around, there was fierce opposition to the level of housing development proposed, the associated infrastructure, and the potential destruction of natural landscapes. This was partly because people couldn’t see what they stood to gain from being at the heart of a “science superpower”. Local communities will accept even significant development where it will create opportunities and improve their quality of life. The hard truth is that science and technology parks can seem as remote as Oxbridge colleges – places where you need a postgraduate qualification to work, and where large numbers of people drive to carry out opaque activities, contributing little to the local area beyond higher volumes of traffic and soaring house prices.

The Oxford-Cambridge corridor is theoretically on the doorstep of four million people, but the opportunities within it are perceived to be inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. This is something that we urgently need to counter if the growth corridor is to be a success.

It makes sense to piggyback off the strengths of Oxford and Cambridge in education and commercialising innovation, but there is a much bigger opportunity. A lot of the growth that science and technology parks generate is symbiotic, within associated industries such as advanced manufacturing and supply chain partners located just outside key hubs. In-between places like Milton Keynes, Bedford and Bicester may not get as much airtime, but they will be very important to delivering on the corridor’s potential. They are also more affordable in comparison to the overheated Oxbridge property markets. Investing in these areas is a way to spread the benefits beyond the core clusters, and it will be essential for generating and maintaining support for development over the long term.

Many elements come into play during the planning approval process, but job creation and wider economic benefits carry a lot of weight. This is about social value, and it’s something we think about a lot at Ridge. We have a dedicated social value team who advise clients and local authorities on how to get the greatest impact from projects and maximise the knock-on benefits. What could separate some schemes from others is where developers have genuinely thought about social value from the outset, rather than it being an add-on or a soundbite.
 

Bringing social value to life

That means putting objectives and plans in place that can be delivered throughout the project, from giving careers talks in schools to providing training facilities that will produce future generations of technicians. The UK’s global competitiveness in science doesn’t just hinge on attracting the brightest PhDs. We also have an acute skills shortage outside academia, at a technical and vocational level. One way to address this is to include tertiary colleges within science and technology developments.

This is something that our client, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, has done very successfully on its Culham campus near Abingdon. Oxfordshire Advanced Skills (OAS) provides high-quality training for apprentice engineers and technicians for technology businesses in the Thames Valley. It’s a way to bring 16-18 year olds into the industry at a more accessible level, while providing a valuable supply of qualified workers.

Demonstrating the value of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor to the many communities it encompasses will be critical for getting it off the ground, and delivering on its enormous promise over the years to come, both for this region and the rest of the UK. Clusters are very powerful for generating innovation and wealth – but we also need to make sure that this trickles down to permeate the whole of society.

Liz Sparrow is an Architecture Partner and leads the Science and Research group at Ridge.
Email: lsparrow@ridge.co.uk

Nick Stafford is a Partner in the Town Planning team at Ridge.
Email: nickstafford@ridge.co.uk