University deal to build £210m life sciences park
Campus will accelerate drug development and technology
ANEW development partnership has been signed to build a £210 million life sciences campus in Birmingham.
University of Birmingham has teamed up with Bruntwood SciTech to lead the development of Birmingham Health Innovation Campus near the former’s main hub in Edgbaston.
The project, which was previously known as Birmingham Life Sciences Park, will contain up to 657,000 sq ft of lab, office and incubation space which will provide opportunities for all stages of health and life science businesses.
The campus is expected to attract significant investment and accelerate the development and deployment of new drugs, diagnostics and healthcare technologies to patients. In 2017, University of Birmingham agreed a deal for ten acres of land off the Battery Park site in Selly Oak where a new retail park opened two years ago.
It said that, by 2030, the campus will have seen £210 million in new investment, created around 10,000 new jobs and will deliver more than £400 million to the local economy. Bruntwood SciTech is already well established in the city after its 2018 purchase of Innovation Birmingham from the city council while its commercial property arm owns office blocks such as Cornwall Buildings and Mclaren.
The first phase of Birmingham Health Innovation Campus will comprise a six-storey, 133,000 sq ft building housing a new innovation centre called Precision Health Technologies Accelerator.
It will bring together genomics and diagnostics for healthcare technologies development and evaluation, clinical trials and healthcare data, providing a range of prototyping, incubation and lab facilities for early-stage businesses.
There will also be access to business support to develop and bring innovations rapidly to market.
The first phase building will also provide space for larger, more established SMEs and scale ups working in medtech, precision medicine, diagnostics and digital healthcare.
A public consultation on this will be launched soon and work is due to complete in 2023.
Development funding has already been secured from Birmingham City Council and the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership.
The university’s vice-principal, Tim Jones, said: “With access to Birmingham’s world-class genomics laboratories, health data programmes, healthcare technology development teams, clinical trials leadership and academic expertise, Birmingham Health Innovation Campus will become the ideal place for innovative health and life sciences businesses to thrive.
“This ambitious new development will leverage the existing integrated ecosystem to drive innovation and economic growth – all centred on a shared mission to transform the health of all citizens, in Birmingham and beyond, by accelerating the development and adoption of healthcare innovations.”
David Hardman, managing director of Bruntwood SciTech in Birmingham, added: “This is a huge opportunity for the UK’s life science sector.
“By creating an environment that will not only help businesses to form, scale, collaborate and grow, we will establish a new thriving life sciences hub, which will create much needed capacity for the West Midlands and help to attract further international investment to the region and beyond.”