Is the city with the UK’s best-performing monorail economy still the capital of all things clever and complicated? EG’s Question Time panellists debate this question and others
After a record year of take-up, Cambridge is about to welcome the UK’s second-largest drug maker, AstraZeneca, which will move its 1,500 people and bring a £330m capital investment from Manchester to its new global corporate headquarters in the city in 2016.
With this in mind, 150 of the industry’s movers and shakers attended EG’s Cambridge Question Time on Thursday
27 February at the Howard Theatre, part of Cambridge University’s Downing College, to hear a heavyweight panel – featuring Andy Williams, the man behind the AstraZeneca move, and five more Cambridge property experts – tackle this and other issues head on.
Andy Williams, UK footprint transition team leader, AstraZeneca
Why Cambridge?
As a pharmaceutical company we recognise that the next generation of drugs is going to require a better understanding of science and we are unlikely to be able to do that on our own; we are going to have to work in collaboration with other companies and institutes. Plus Cambridge is a recognised area of scientific excellence – that’s in a global context.
Should we build higher in Cambridge?
The AstraZeneca model is not to build a great big skyscraper. Colleagues don’t need to be travelling seven or eight floors up or down to see each other. We want to build something that gets into the campus feel, something that will be sympathetic to the Cambridge scene.
How will Cambridge meet the needs of AstraZeneca staff?
We are recruiting a lot of people from outside Cambridge, people who may not have the same commitment to the area as local people have. So while they are choosing to live in Cambridge, they would probably be just as happy living in areas around it. If that’s the case, they will need the infrastructure to get to where the jobs are going to be. We have been working closely with the authorities on the City Deal so we can then see what the infrastructure improvements will be.
How important are airport links to AstraZeneca?
We have an increasing proportion of our staff in Shanghai and the Far East, and the Middle East, as well as the US, so the company will have a lot of visitors coming in to Cambridge on flights from many points around the globe. Easing their transition from the plane to the site will be very important to us, so we will continue to explore options for improving our transport links with Stansted, Cambridge and Heathrow airports.
Beverley Firth, partner, Mills & Reeve
Where can further development happen?
A number of years ago, I thought demand, particularly from life sciences, might move away from laboratories and into offices. Instead of doing R&D, companies were leaning more towards a search and development model, buying compounds, adding value to them and then licensing them out. But we haven’t seen so much of that, so I think there is still demand for chemistry and biology labs. Companies want to be on a science park or in a cluster. We should focus on development within clusters – in Havermill, in Alconbury – but not lose that sense of the cluster. We could link environmental sciences, agricultural and biotechnology. We could look at the convergence between ICT and biotech and build pockets of excellence.
Are planners planning enough for housing growth?
You should first look at Cambridge and the surroundings to see if housing growth can be sustainable there. You’ve got opportunities to cycle, to walk and to get public transport to work. Other than that it’s just a balancing exercise. But we need to be honest about what the housing needs actually are. Examination of the Cambridge and South Cambridge plans will be an important task.
How should Cambridge respond to the Med City initiative?
It was flattering to see London wanting to tag on to Cambridge’s success. The city is internationally well known and I think we should maintain that.
Rob Sadler, head of Cambridge offices, Savills
Is Cambridge an investment target?
Strong rental growth in the residential, educational and commercial sectors in Cambridge over the past five or six years has fuelled the investment market and that is why we are having such a good run of late in terms of the transactional business. And certainly in the past couple of years Cambridge has been the focus for all sorts of reasons. AstraZeneca’s relocation is an absolutely fantastic achievement, and we are seeing a ripple effect.
Is overseas money coming into Cambridge?
We are already witnessing it, in all sorts of sectors. In residential, we are seeing investors from the Far East coming in and buying large chunks of property and we are seeing it on the commercial side. We look at Biomed coming in and buying Granta Park, which was its first purchase outside the US, and that was 18 months ago. So I think that we are already seeing that Cambridge is very much on the global stage. And when you talk to foreign investors, they all say yes, they are all aware of London, but the next city that they are also aware of is Cambridge, and it is highly regarded.
Does Cambridge need an airport?
If we didn’t have an airport in Cambridge then we wouldn’t need one; we would use Stansted. But the fact we do have one and it is one of the largest employers in the region is very important. Marshall Group, which owns the airport, employs more than 4,000 people, and many of these jobs are, directly or indirectly, connected to the airport. So the answer is, yes we do.
Tim Leathes, project director for Alconbury Weald, Urban & Civic
Is Cambridge an investment target?
It’s all about occupational demand, and there is plenty of it, so yes. But when looking at the sectors where there is demand, I think it’s also important to identify the right clusters. Proximity to Cambridge does not necessarily make for a strong location – it is position within the broader Cambridge region.
Alconbury Weald, a cluster, is presumably right for manufacturing, engineering, low-carbon and ICT?
Exactly. And we’re working closely with central, regional and local government to bring that forward as part of the enterprise zone. We believe that with the scale and the commitment we’ve got and the approach we are taking we can create a new cluster. Also, Peterborough is growing and there’s a capacity crunch in Cambridge we can work with.
Should development be concentrated on the edge of the city or dispersed?
It is clear, with local plans coming forward, that other districts like the county forming satellite settlements, such as Norsthowe, Waterbeach and Cambourne. There are large, predominantly ex-MoD sites under single ownership with big chunks of land and from a planning point of view you can see why that’s attractive to the districts and the county – they can start to manage the infrastructure that’s required. Brownfield development in the satellite locations is definitely going to be coming forward.
Should we build higher in Cambridge?
There are buildings on Station Road that are what you wouldn’t even call mid-height in London. When set in the right environment and done properly, high-rise architecture is something that you can admire and it’s an attractive investment proposition.
Jeanette Walker, project director, Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Is Cambridge an investment target?
In the Cambridge medical cluster we are seeing a lot more enquiries today than we were even just a few years ago from companies in other parts of the UK and the world. The AstraZeneca relocation is an endorsement because it was competitive. CBC isn’t yet another science park in the UK, it’s a healthcare village in which academics, businesses and clinicians can work together.
Is the only way to grow to build higher?
Cambridge is a quirky place. You’ve got the colleges rubbing shoulders with the least likely neighbours, and it would be a shame in my view if we did put up skyscrapers in the city centre. I think it would be contrary to that sense of community.
Is air travel a priority?
I do think Cambridge airport is underutilised by the business community. You can fly to Paris and Amsterdam – I think there are a couple of flights a day – and then connect from those hubs to the US and the Far East. In terms of the roads, as somebody who travels on the A14 every day down to the campus, I think we could encourage companies to use more flexible working practices, for example allowing staff to arrive a little bit later or to come in early to aid traffic flow. Also, we should be incentivising companies in the new settlements around Cambridge to establish the types of jobs there that typically one would find on the Cambridge Science Park, or in one of the other research centres.
Rob Hall, development director, Hill Residential
Why aren’t you supplying more housing into such a healthy market?
We’ve got 570 units in planning which we would start tomorrow if we could. And decisions have already been taken to do some fringe developments. But for schemes in North West Cambridge, it is about getting them in the ground quickly and the house building market has the appetite to do that, once it is given the chance.
Can developers keep up with demand?
Cambridge is a medieval town and we’ve got strict planning guidelines to protect it, so it’s not always going to be easy. Yes, we are going to have sustainable settlements out of town, but they are all going to continue to put pressure on transport links into Cambridge. People will still a want to pile into Cambridge, and that’s the real problem.
What is the real need for housing?
We’ve got the city and we’ve got South Cambridge. In the city, the suggested need is 14,000, which is being satisfied around the extension of its boundaries. The target Cambridge has set itself is 700 units a year for the next five years and they are predicting something like 1,500 units a year in those fringe sites, so we should over-perform. If you look at the city’s affordable housing list, something like 3,000 dwellings are required, but if we proceed at 1,500 a year, we should remove that list within six years. In South Cambridge, though, I think the numbers are underestimated. There is an opportunity with land that is in control of the government; Waterbeach is only producing 1,500 units and we know, being on Homes & Communities Agency-owned land, it has the capacity for 10,000. That centre has to be brought forward more quickly, but at the moment it’s not in the plans until after 2031.
? To watch video coverage of this debate and for details about future events, go to www.estatesgazette.com/questiontime
