BLOG: The Cambridge Moment
Cambridge has been in the news a lot this year, but what do all the recent announcements mean for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, and for those who work here or live nearby? Ed Watson, Interim Managing Director of CBC Ltd, gives his views and explains what we might expect for the coming year…
It’s an exciting time for Cambridge. The city has been in the spotlight throughout 2025 since it was confirmed by the Government as a key part of its growth agenda.
The current UK housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, is backing the growth opportunities and is “ambitious for Cambridge”. The Cambridge Growth Company is proposed to become a Development Corporation with a remit “to address barriers to growth and help unlock Greater Cambridge’s full potential”. In October Growth Company was backed up by an allocation of up to £400m to deliver this ambition.
There has been welcome backing from successive Governments, and it’s justified. The Government’s National Industrial Strategy identified life sciences as one of the UK’s “highest-potential sectors”¹, and is already worth around £100 billion to the economy². Cambridge is the jewel in the crown for UK life sciences, providing £16.5bn turnover³, so logic dictates that you need to build on what already happens here to realise that potential. And the beating heart of the city’s life sciences community is the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has published its Local Growth Plan with a vision “to both consolidate and accelerate our world-leading life sciences sector” and identifies the Campus as an ‘Opportunity Zone’ within “Global City” Cambridge4.
The Campus contributes £4.7bn to the UK economy each year, with the potential for this to increase to between £12.7-18.2bn by 2050. Every £10 the campus creates generates a further £10 for the UK economy5. It was recently included in the Treasury’s Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor Investment Prospectus as a “growth location” which is “ready for investment”6.
So everyone is in agreement on the enormous potential that our campus offers to UK growth and global life sciences. At Cambridge Biomedical Campus Limited, we already see it daily. Our campus community is already accelerating breakthroughs in life sciences whilst driving economic growth, but we can do more, and here’s what we need, and how we can play our part…
How we make it happen
One Campus, one vision
In 2024 we published our updated Vision 2050 which set out the high-level ambitions in health, education and life sciences for organisations working on the Campus. It still outlines how we can take what is special about the Campus currently and build on it, creating an even bigger impact on health and life sciences globally, as well as growing the local, regional and national economy.
However, an obstacle to this is the current patchwork of land ownership, as is the lack if a single guiding force in managing the campus as a place day-to-day or overseeing its long term development. We laid out our conditions for supporting any Campus expansion of the in June at our Open Forum (slides downloadable here), which include amenities, infrastructure and transport strategies which cover not just new development, but the development of the Campus as a whole. We are also pushing that this is underpinned by a legally binding mechanism to make sure these benefits are delivered. We believe a piecemeal approach means missing out on the opportunity to create a truly world-class place which attracts and retains talent.
Greater Cambridge Shared Planning’s recently published draft Local Plan is currently open for consultation until the end of January. It includes outline plans for development and expansion of the Campus and we are pleased to see that it expects a similar campus-wide and infrastructure-led approach in terms of development.
Investment in transport infrastructure
People also need to be able to get here. We need initiatives like Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) and our new Cambridge South Train Station to help alleviate some pressures on parking and buses; allowing people to commute sustainably from further away. However we know that improvements are needed now and are convening bus providers and commissioners to improve the regularity and reliability of services. If people can’t get here, growth won’t happen
Don’t take healthcare for granted
Cambridge and Peterborough are the 1st and 4th fastest growing cities in the UK respectively, with population growths of 17.3% and 14% between 2013-237. This reflects the employment opportunities in the region, and the organisations such as AstraZeneca and Abcam having increased their presence. This is driven by their desire to be co-located with world-class institutions such as the MRC’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology and excellent NHS hospitals such as Addenbrooke’s and Royal Papworth. But the hospitals aren’t just vital for research, they also provide the acute and specialist services this growing population relies on.
These hospitals treat over a million NHS patients each year, but the Addenbrooke’s A&E department sees 3-4 times as many patients every week as it was built for. We are pushing for investment in these services and a new acute hospital to be delivered as soon as possible. This will both accommodate the demand from our growing population and provide a world class hospital to compliment the life science businesses we are hoping to attract.
Involve local people
It is critical that we bring local people with us, ensuring they have a voice in how the city grows. On the Campus, our Local Voices Programme helps residents inform our work, and the concerns we hear from them are well-known to planners and politicians – water and power scarcity, insufficient public transport, education, affordable housing and CBC driving improvements in health care.
Cambridge attracts the brightest minds from across the globe, but we also need to look at how we can make the most of talent locally. We are working with Campus partners, Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP) and are talking to the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority about how we can do this across the city and beyond. We have made a start in running our first STEM Campus Safari to inspire local school children about jobs in health and life sciences and continuing to grow our Careers Fair which returns in March. Both of these are part of our Talent Programme which aims to help raise aspirations and provide opportunities for work for all people in the City and beyond regardless of their qualifications. There are jobs at all levels of skill and experience.
Don’t forget the business pipeline
As well as being fertile ground for big businesses, Cambridge also has a rich history of innovators, spin outs and start-ups. It’s why so many companies want to be here. One of our members, Abcam, started out in 1998 when founders Jonathan Milner, Tony Kouzarides and David Cleevely, envisioned an online business to sell antibodies. In 2023 it was bought by Danaher for $5.7 billion.
National policy is important, but if we want to deliver local growth in the long term, we can’t take small businesses for granted and need to ensure we can supply what they need from inception to fundraising, scaling and going to market. We have some support on Campus but are exploring options for an incubator on site to build on the already impressive support on offer from organisations such as the Milner Therapeutics Institute and ideaSpace.
Build on partnerships and existing networks
We continue to work closely with the Cambridge Growth Company. We welcome their success in securing investment and building connections between central government and key Cambridge institutions. We hope this will enable us to jointly unlock some of the challenges of growth for the Campus and life sciences in the city. Our close partners at CUHP lead the life sciences strategy for the region, ensuring that what makes the area truly unique – healthcare discovery science – remains at the centre of our growth story. The whole local life sciences community fed into the strategy, and it remains vital that we work together to deliver it.
We will also build on our connections with other innovation hubs across the UK: the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor and associated supercluster is projected to provide £78 billion in cumulative economic growth by 20358. There will be better connectivity between the science powerhouses through East-West Rail which promises to further strengthen collaboration and provide key new routes for talent to commute. To our east we have the Cambridge-Norwich Tech Corridor and to the north the Cambridge x Manchester Innovation Partnership. Led by these cities respective universities, this will be the backbone of a cross-UK innovation network which will pilot new approaches to drive growth in a range of different sectors.
It’s time to stop talking about potential. We have government backing. We have the local talent. We have a plan. Let’s start realising it.
Ed Watson
Interim Managing Director
References
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68595e56db8e139f95652dc6/industrial_strategy_policy_paper.pdf
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/life-sciences-sector-plan-to-grow-economy-and-transform-nhs
- https://democracy.cambridgeshirepeterborough-ca.gov.uk/documents/s5480/FINAL%20DRAFT%20-%20CPCA%20Local%20Growth%20Plan.pdf
- https://cambridgeshirepeterborough-ca.gov.uk/news/mayors-westminster-local-growth-plan-launch-calls-on-government-to-back-tripling-of-cambridgeshire-and-peterborough-economy/
- https://cambridge-biomedical.com/news/cbc-uk-economy/
- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oxford-cambridge-growth-corridor-investment-prospectus
- https://democracy.cambridgeshirepeterborough-ca.gov.uk/documents/s5480/FINAL%20DRAFT%20-%20CPCA%20Local%20Growth%20Plan.pdf
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jobs-homes-and-better-transport-links-for-the-oxford-cambridge-growth-corridor#:~:text=Today’s%20announcements%20mark%20a%20significant,now%20go%20further%20and%20faster.
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