New towns, innovation clusters and the Growth Corridor - report part four

Image: Bicester Motion CGI, courtesy of Ridge and Partners

In the fourth part of Future Cities Forum report on 'New towns, innovation clusters and the Growth Arc', we look at the opportunities for science and innovation investment as well as the intricacies of the planning system that help or hinder development.

Contributing organisations included in this report are built environment consultancy Ridge and Partners, consulting engineers Price & Myers, The Open University, law firm Mills & Reeve LLP and planning consultancy David Lock Associates.

Ridge describes the regeneration of a former RAF base positioned within the Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor :

'Bicester Motion Masterplan is a landmark development located in Bicester, at the 444-acre Former RAF station. This is a site of national historic importance as it is the most complete and best-preserved bomber base in the country predating 1945. Its existing structures are mainly Grade II Listed and some are Scheduled Ancient Monuments.

'The vision is to provide a vibrant and sustainable future for the former RAF Bicester and offer a collection of inclusive visitor experiences to celebrate the past, present and future of automotive and aviation culture. The project will ensure that the historic airfield location it calls home will fulfil its original and continued purpose as a focal point for cutting edge technology.

'Innovation Quarter (previous Future Automotive Speed Technology hub, or F.A.S.T. Zone) is a new centre of excellence and aims to be a thriving home for automotive ‘tech’ development, demonstration, and education.'

Architect at Ridge Michael Mitchell spoke at our Milton Keynes Council-hosted discussion about how a former and listed MOD site has become a highly successful site for innovation investment.

'It's a really interesting success story about an innovation cluster. Cllr Marland of Milton Keynes City Council mentioned the need for large-scale anchors. And, you know, in Milton Keynes, you've got Red Bull and we've worked with Red Bull. And there's EIT in Oxford now. But what we found at Bicester Motion is that it's actually the smaller to medium-scale businesses looking for homes. And there's a whole community of innovators.

'There's a lot of innovation happening in this country around mobility, future of electric vehicles, future of fuel. And what Bicester Motion has provided is the framework for a development where they can all be together in a community. And that's through a large-scale ex-MOD airfield.

'Over time, they've restored various buildings and they've provided a whole mix of size tenancies, which allows businesses to start very small, be a small start-up, and then grow into something much bigger and take on more space as they need. But it's all down to a few success factors. And I think from a kind of macro point of view, it's the transport links, which are at the moment very London-focused.

'I think the introduction of this East-West (rail( route should open up great opportunity for more innovation clusters all throughout Oxfordshire, Cambridge, and Milton Keynes. And there's also, we've mentioned many times, motorsports as at Silverstone, all the adjacent industries. There's a lot of interest we've found with people looking for homes. And that's why Bicester Motion is very interesting, because they have this whole ecosystem of small, like-minded businesses all around that theme of mobility.

'On a macro scale, you have the proximity to Oxford, the proximity to talent, and on a micro scale, it's essentially just a great place to be. It's a historic site with great vistas, great views to landscape. These are lessons we can learn for any new projects coming forward to avoid any new towns becoming just commuter towns with this very residential focus, to create a great sense of place. So people want to stay there as well as work there. Through this great connection of talent that we have in the UK, there's enormous opportunity, I think, to create repeats of more and more innovation clusters across the whole Arc. It's really exciting to hear the discussion so far.

Image below: Bicester Motion interior CGI, courtesy of Ridge and Partners

Dr Julia Cooke, Associate Dean External Engagement and Enterprise in the Faculty of STEM at The Open University, joined the conversation to talk about the strong vision the University has for being part of Milton Keynes development, and its science and innovation credentials:

'Milton Keynes is our home. You know, Milton Keynes is where the OU began, exists. We have 4,000 staff and a lot of those staff are based here. And I don't think it would have grown and developed and become what it has as a city, without being so open and innovative and happy to try and look for the future.

'So I think we have a new Vice Chancellor, David Phoenix, who's just started. He's developing a new strategy for the Open University, which I think is really exciting. It will be released later this year, but I think the most exciting thing for me is this kind of thread about empowering communities through partnership, this move away from doing everything in-house and a lot more connection with partnerships. I think that first focus on partnerships is local and here. I mean, we're a four nations university, we're always going to work at multiple scales, but it's not a binary decision to work here or with other communities.

'I think he's placed a mark there by becoming the Vice-Chair of the Arc Universities Group, and I am happy to invest in this area and put my time in there. We've appointed a new Provost Chancellor of Enterprise and Partnerships, with a focus locally as well as at the other scale. Thinking about the research we do, obviously we do internationally recognised research and all that sort of thing, but there's also a lot of place-based research.

Image: Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire (courtesy Harwell Campus)

Anna Wai, Partner at Price & Myers was asked when she is working on science buildings for Harwell, and these buildings have got to be sustainable, is there a best practice guide to this so that we don't end up with science and innovation hubs that are very quickly disregarded? What are the elements that are going to make these places survive?

'I think there's quite a lot of research and white papers on that, and everyone's trying their best to meet net zero targets and so on, but the science and the innovation community is a bit harder because they are intensive industries. I think in Harwell, one of its advantages is it's got this very proactive leadership team which looks after it, and it recognises how important infrastructure is.

'So one of the examples that we want to talk about is that they have an existing data centre, which is quite tiny. It's only about 25 metres by 25 metres square, but they've worked out that that could, if they've got a district heating system onto it, they could empower the heating needs demand of the big campus for about 75% of the year. So there's a lot of things that are in development, and we also work with a lot of hedge fund ventures as well, and they are looking into the cleaner energy side of it too. So it's all in collaboration.

'Harwell has this, I suppose, it's a bit of a plus that it has those anchor industries, and it has the research facility there as well, but actually there's a lot of spin-offs that come out and outside of it, but once again, it lacks in the housing development, and also there's this infrastructure as well When I say infrastructure, it's the societal infrastructure that's the difficulty, which I think Milton Park in Didcot does a little bit better, because you have this good system which will help. So, for example, in the Oxfordshire Harwell - Vale of White Horse area, the only issue is that you can bring in some big solar farms, but actually there's no employment in the solar farm, because they couldn't get the energy through the ageing infrastructure. EDF came and said we could get an 18 megawatt solar farm, and the campus turned away and said actually we can't put that power through our network.

'Recently in Oxford, we've been getting things through planning, but we talked about how difficult it was. One of the conditions came back as saying we cannot occupy these new lab buildings until the sewage treatment plant has been upgraded in 2035. No one invested is going to go, yes please, we'll build a building now, and wait eight years before we occupy it. So that's one of the great advantages that Milton Keynes has really, in providing the support.'

Image: Milton Keynes Central - looking towards the station building

How has the UK government's new directions with the planning system helped to start a better move towards progress?

Peter Seaborn, Partner and Head of Planning at law firm Mills & Reeve commented that he felt the Government is moving its planning policy towards a growth focus:

'We haven't always had this. but there is positivity if you look at the recent changes to the NPPF, for example, in legislation.

So there is a deliberate step towards growth, and as you're aware, we work very closely with Nigel Hugill of Urban&Civic on large-scale sites, and there's also a recognition of the importance of these sites, and the need for them to be treated differently from your 50 unit, 100 unit scheme. So there is recognition that you're looking at schemes with ten to twenty year build-out periods, as Nigel said, huge infrastructure costs, the importance of quality at the outset, and with that comes viability issues, and just ensuring that over the long term, there is flexibility.

'So the fact that there's a recognition of these things is really, really helpful. On the delivery side, as I mentioned, based in Cambridge, we have consultation on the development corporation, and in the developer forums, the question being posed is, what does this bring which we don't already have in the system? And if you look at that, resolving some of these, or being a figurehead to resolve some of these issues, waste water, potable water, power, transport, all things, having a single voice from an area saying this is an issue and this needs to be resolved, it is helpful.

'Going back to Oxford, the city has really struggled through not having a joined up position, and strategic planning should bring that back. I suppose one of the challenges is the time it's going to take to implement these changes, and also change fatigue. We're seeing on the legal and planning side, consultations coming in on a weekly basis, sometimes more than once a week. I spoke to one local authority who was saying that we're bringing forward a plan, it's a time period, we've just had this consultation on a framework which when it comes in may undermine the policies that we're putting together in this plan.

'Those policies were important for us in terms of explaining to the public why we're pushing for growth, and so we're in a real challenging position here in terms of how we go about saying to the public that you're getting growth and you're getting these benefits. So that predictability in the system is just something we've got to keep an eye on.'

Image: the city of Cambridge from the air - courtesy Webb Aviation

Julia Foster, Managing Partner at David Lock Associates, commented:

'Can I just add something to that, because I think we keep talking about planning being a problem, but I think we've got to get a far more sophisticated dialogue around this. What do we mean when we talk about planning being a problem? We're driven at the local level, you guys delivering on a real basis, in real time, have to deliver infrastructure first before you can do anything.

'On every plan you can say you can get these days, but the actual problem is the fact that we can't take infrastructure first any higher than that end of the spectrum. And if your problem is whether to build a pathway or whether to build a high street station, it's because there's no spatial plan for that piece of geography of any sort that would direct you to this is going to be a growth location, so this should be a high street station, a parkway station, or it's going to be something that can grow and develop and nurture it in a place that doesn't.

'It's the same for the electricity, for the grid capacity, it's the same for water, it's the same for everything else. We don't have any better than local dimension to planning for infrastructure. Planning in and of itself, town planning, is not the problem We'll work around whatever you give us to work around, so we have a plan, if anyone pitches.

'Well the spatial development strategy is not over. It may well start to, but is it the right geography and how is that? We're talking about this with hope, aren't we? With great support, with great hope, but at the same time we're also immediately undermining that. I've been looking at the five live consultations over in Cambridgeshire at the moment, looking at development corporation prospect. Development corporation is needed apparently, if you read the blurb, to resolve the joint working between Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire. They're all in a joint planning authority.'

Future Cities Forum would like to thank all the contributors to this forum and report.