Harwell: Cracking the DNA of a science campus
12 June 2015
For decades, this pocket of Oxfordshire countryside operated under the radar. But with a little help from property experts, Harwell Campus is stepping out of the shadows.
On the way out of his office, Angus Horner pokes his head through a door belonging to another company. Just visible in the background is a courtyard that looks distinctly other-worldly, intentionally so: the outside space
is designed to replicate conditions on the surface of the moon. In the foreground sits a young man in casual clothes with a space exploration robot at his feet, a soldering iron in his hand and a remote control resting beside an Iron Man-shaped mug on his desk.
Welcome to Harwell Campus, which has for decades been a mecca for the best scientific minds that the UK - and now the world - has to offer. This scene is typical of what goes on in this obscure piece of Oxfordshire countryside a few miles outside Didcot that Horner has made his home.
The problem is that hardly anybody knows it exists, in the UK or internationally.
Despite boasting approaching $2bn of cutting-edge technology, the campus has, until the last couple of years, lacked effective strategic management and marketing. Horner’s mission is to change that by bringing industry understanding and property know-how to the hugely important, if little known, site. The question is: how?
Harwell’s location was at first intentionally obscure. A former World War Two RAF base - the first British planes to support the D-Day landings took off from the site - Harwell became the base for the UK’s civil nuclear research in the 1940s at a time when international espionage was at the forefront of government minds.
Creating a community
Since then, however, the site’s fortunes have waned - it now employs only half the number of people it did at its peak - although not for want of investment. The British government has continued to bankroll the sort of kit private companies can rarely afford and Harwell now boasts a collection of facilities that, combined, cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
But even with the best technology in the world, Harwell still requires the input of the property industry, which is where Horner enters the story.
A chartered surveyor with a strong track record of project delivery, Horner established his core business Prorsus in 2009 when he became interested in the reorientation of UK plc towards the knowledge economy.
In 2011, he teamed up with Gordon Duncan, an accountant with huge experience of supporting both multinationals and start-ups in the life sciences. Duncan helped rewrite London Stock Exchange rules to allow for the listing of companies with fewer than three years’ worth of accounts - a move of incalculable value to fast-growing, cash-hungry young firms.
The purpose of the partnership was to acquire the Pfizer campus in Kent, but the deal fell apart and the site was instead acquired by Palmer Capital. Then in 2013, Horner’s phone rang. “Some of the people involved in Kent called and asked if I would be interested in looking at Harwell instead,” says Horner.
Aware that he needed additional private sector firepower, Horner approached Development Securities, which jumped at the opportunity to acquire a stake in Harwell. The company had already been moving towards greater involvement in the knowledge economy, as well as more complex regeneration projects, so Harwell was a good fit.
“Angus approached us in 2013 and we thought it was a fantastic opportunity,” says Duncan Trench, head of delivery at Development Securities. “We are working in a similar field in Cambridge and think it’s an important sector to be in. We teamed up to provide the resource and the finance and here we are.”
The result was a limited partnership, the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus, owned 50% by Prorsus and Development Securities and 50% by the public sector in the form of the Science and Technology Funding Council, which owns the heavy-duty research equipment on the site, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which owns the freehold on the land.
In short, the public sector put in the land and the private sector put up cash to match the value. The priority now is to capitalise on this for the benefit of UK plc, the taxpayer and the global scientific community in five areas: space and satellite applications; life sciences and healthcare; big data and supercomputing; energy and environment; and advanced engineering and materials.
Doing so will probably not in the first instance be achieved by marketing the current crop of buildings on the site - it can’t be denied that at present Harwell isn’t much to look at. Yes, the latest bit of kit - the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator - is an impressive structure (infinitely more so when one considers what happens inside). But for the most part, the campus is laid out in a similar fashion to other previous generations of science parks, with little thought given to amenity or where workers or visitors might rest their heads at night.
That, of course, is where Horner and Trench come in. The partners currently have a planning application lodged for the next phase of development - around 500,000 sq ft of mostly commercial space, but with some leisure elements - and the idea is to make Harwell a functioning community, as it was in its heyday.
Trench says the project fits with Development Securities’ interest in regeneration schemes, as exemplified by its acquisition of regeneration specialist Cathedral, in May last year. “We’re looking at this from a point of view of what we can do in terms of housing, leisure and education,” he says.
The partnership has plans for at least 1,000 homes on the northern fringe of the site. However, the amount of land available means it could accommodate many thousands more workers in millions of square feet of new commercial space. The current working population of the site is around 5,000 and with the plans on the table that should increase to 10,000 - about the previous peak -
but the ambition is far greater.
“Companies need to be able to land here with hundreds of people, so we have to be able to provide the infrastructure,” says Horner. “We need homes, bars, cafés and so on. But it’s also about providing all that at a quality that makes a point of difference, not just with other facilities in the UK but internationally.”
The kit that makes Harwell unique
But even with the best technology in the world, Harwell still requires the input of the property industry, which is where Horner enters the story.
A chartered surveyor with a strong track record of project delivery, Horner established his core business Prorsus in 2009 when he became interested in the reorientation of UK plc towards the knowledge economy.
In 2011, he teamed up with Gordon Duncan, an accountant with huge experience of supporting both multinationals and start-ups in the life sciences. Duncan helped rewrite London Stock Exchange rules to allow for the listing of companies with fewer than three years’ worth of accounts - a move of incalculable value to fast-growing, cash-hungry young firms.
The purpose of the partnership was to acquire the Pfizer campus in Kent, but the deal fell apart and the site was instead acquired by Palmer Capital. Then in 2013, Horner’s phone rang. “Some of the people involved in Kent called and asked if I would be interested in looking at Harwell instead,” says Horner.
Aware that he needed additional private sector firepower, Horner approached Development Securities, which jumped at the opportunity to acquire a stake in Harwell. The company had already been moving towards greater involvement in the knowledge economy, as well as more complex regeneration projects, so Harwell was a good fit.
“Angus approached us in 2013 and we thought it was a fantastic opportunity,” says Duncan Trench, head of delivery at Development Securities. “We are working in a similar field in Cambridge and think it’s an important sector to be in. We teamed up to provide the resource and the finance and here we are.”
The result was a limited partnership, the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus, owned 50% by Prorsus and Development Securities and 50% by the public sector in the form of the Science and Technology Funding Council, which owns the heavy-duty research equipment on the site, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which owns the freehold on the land.
In short, the public sector put in the land and the private sector put up cash to match the value. The priority now is to capitalise on this for the benefit of UK plc, the taxpayer and the global scientific community in five areas: space and satellite applications; life sciences and healthcare; big data and supercomputing; energy and environment; and advanced engineering and materials.
Doing so will probably not in the first instance be achieved by marketing the current crop of buildings on the site - it can’t be denied that at present Harwell isn’t much to look at. Yes, the latest bit of kit - the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator - is an impressive structure (infinitely more so when one considers what happens inside). But for the most part, the campus is laid out in a similar fashion to other previous generations of science parks, with little thought given to amenity or where workers or visitors might rest their heads at night.
That, of course, is where Horner and Trench come in. The partners currently have a planning application lodged for the next phase of development - around 500,000 sq ft of mostly commercial space, but with some leisure elements - and the idea is to make Harwell a functioning community, as it was in its heyday.
Trench says the project fits with Development Securities’ interest in regeneration schemes, as exemplified by its acquisition of regeneration specialist Cathedral, in May last year. “We’re looking at this from a point of view of what we can do in terms of housing, leisure and education,” he says.
The partnership has plans for at least 1,000 homes on the northern fringe of the site. However, the amount of land available means it could accommodate many thousands more workers in millions of square feet of new commercial space. The current working population of the site is around 5,000 and with the plans on the table that should increase to 10,000 - about the previous peak -
but the ambition is far greater.
“Companies need to be able to land here with hundreds of people, so we have to be able to provide the infrastructure,” says Horner. “We need homes, bars, cafés and so on. But it’s also about providing all that at a quality that makes a point of difference, not just with other facilities in the UK but internationally.”
The kit that makes Harwell unique
- Diamond Light Source
- ISIS
- Central Laser Facility
- Technology Space Cluster