We Are Pioneer Group is looking to accelerate its incubator programme across the UK, as the government prioritises the country’s position as a leading name in life sciences.
The company, formed by merging BioCity and Knowledge Factory with Trinity Investment Management, has a 2.6m sq ft portfolio spanning Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Manchester and North Yorkshire. Now the company says it wants to ensure that space helps the growing UK life sciences market to retain talent and allow start-ups to scale up.
Richard O’Boyle, executive director of expansion at WAPG, said: “It’s about retaining the talent, IP and the business at its point of origin. We focus on helping a company become as successful as it can be, because that translates into real estate.”
According to research the company carried out alongside JLL, the number of UK life sciences start-ups grew by 24% over the past five years to 681. Most of those are spinouts from Oxford, Cambridge and London universities. However, the Golden Triangle is struggling to accommodate them, resulting in London suffering the biggest outflows of life sciences start-ups from the city.
O’Boyle believes there are ample opportunities “outside of the Golden Triangle”, providing facilities not only for local spinouts but also start-ups created elsewhere. He noted that occupancy levels at WAPG’s Wilton Centre in Yorkshire have boomed recently, with the science park being named as a key part of the new Teesside Freeport’s ambition to create 18,000 jobs.
“Freeport status again provides another incentive for occupiers to locate, grow and expand,” O’Boyle said.
But there are challenges in building out space, not least new requirements for minimum energy performance certificate ratings. Some labs can require three times more air circulating than a traditional office, O’Boyle said – “It needs six air changes per hour for biology, 12 air changes per hour for chemistry”. That, he added, makes it far harder for labs to improve their EPC rating, and could prove a restriction on development.
“If you work in the lab you can’t take your work home,” he added. The solution? “Make an exception to the rule.”
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