It is only right that the government’s recently published Industrial Strategy identified life sciences as one of eight priority sectors for UK growth.
Britain’s research credentials are undisputed – Cambridge alone houses what the Global Innovation Index has described as the world’s most intensive science and technology cluster for the past three years.
But ambition without infrastructure is just aspiration.
The government seems particularly focused on lab space shortages. Earlier this year, Tech Secretary Peter Kyle declared at the techUK Conference that “there is 10 times as much lab space in Boston as there is in Oxford, Cambridge and London combined”.
However, the real question is not just how much space is needed, but also whether the types of space being delivered currently are enough to keep our brightest innovators in the UK….