Policy paper

Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy

Published 19 July 2019

This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government

Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus (credit: OxLEP)

Foreword

When Howard Florey came to Oxford in 1935 as the newly appointed Professor of Pathology, he arrived to state of the art but largely empty labs in the new Sir William Dunn School.

He soon set about recruiting a research team and – by the early war years – Florey, Ernst, Chain and others had turned over the department to making penicillin and demonstrating how effective it could be against bacterial infections. Penicillin then seemed nothing short of miraculous, banishing many infectious diseases that were some of the leading killers of the time. Indeed, the work of the Oxford team ushered in the modern age of antibiotics.

Nearly 85 years on, Oxfordshire is today a global centre of research and innovation. It is home to a number of world-leading science and technology companies which are located across leading business clusters and hubs that form a hive of knowledge intensive economic activity and anchor the area’s strengths in breakthrough sectors.

Oxfordshire is the UK’s engine for innovation: ground breaking R&D is driving the creation of new, dynamic businesses hungry to grow and scale up; cutting edge products and services are solving the challenges in healthcare, mobility, energy and communications; and commercialisation of these new ideas is delivering manufacturing and supply chain opportunities across the length and breadth of our country.

Oxfordshire’s success, therefore, is critical to the success of the UK.

This Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy sets out an ambitious plan to build on Oxfordshire’s strong foundations and world-leading assets. It will deliver transformative growth and prosperity for all communities across the county, supporting the objectives of the national Industrial Strategy. This Strategy looks to build on these strengths and assets to drive R&D and innovation across the region as a pioneering contributor to the Industrial Strategy’s target for national R&D spending to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and 3% in the longer term. In doing so, it will drive Oxfordshire’s ambition to become 1 of the top 3 global innovation ecosystems by 2040.

Achieving this bold and ambitious target will require collaborative working between all partners across Oxfordshire and government. We will need to develop the physical, digital, financial and knowledge infrastructure of Oxfordshire to foster a successful innovation ecosystem that is focused on competing at a global level against our rival international hubs.

This will be supplemented by a thriving business environment which makes Oxfordshire the playground for innovators and entrepreneurs to translate big ideas into commercially successful products and services.

Oxfordshire wants to be a pioneer for clean and sustainable growth, known as the location which harnesses the dynamic potential of its science and technological innovation for the benefit of local residents, business and improved public services which is an exemplar for contemporary living and design, and delivers sustainable and flourishing communities.

Most critical of all, Oxfordshire will be relentless in maximising the full potential of each and every person who lives and works in the county, ensuring that they are equipped with the very best skills which can provide them with the capability to secure the new employment opportunities generated across the innovation ecosystem. The Oxfordshire Social Contract will be central to the ambition to drive social mobility and ensure local residents benefit from the dynamic location which is their home.

This Local Industrial Strategy, therefore, presents a long-term framework against which private and public sector investment decisions can be assessed, grouped around the 5 foundations of productivity. We will use Ideas to establish a globally connected and competitive innovation economy; our People will benefit from a more responsive skills ecosystem creating better opportunities for all; Infrastructure will enable greater connectivity especially across key growth locations; the Business Environment will enable Oxfordshire to become a powerhouse for commercialising transformative technologies; and finally, we will develop Oxfordshire as a living laboratory to help solve the UK’s Grand Challenges for all Places.

Everyone has a role to play in making Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy successful, real and relevant – communities, investors, educators, entrepreneurs, innovators and more.

We invite you to join us in this exciting journey and seize the opportunities which lie ahead of us.

Rt Hon Greg Clark MP
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Jeremy Long
Chair of the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership

Executive summary

Oxfordshire has been at the centre of innovation in the UK for centuries. National and local investments have built up a network of science parks and innovative firms across the county, and now wider investments in the region offer the opportunity to cement the area’s reputation as one of the best locations in the world to innovate.

This Local Industrial Strategy sets out an ambitious plan to build on Oxfordshire’s strong foundations and world-leading assets, to deliver transformative growth which is clean and sustainable and delivers prosperity for all communities across the county. It will deliver the aims of the national Industrial Strategy, government’s long term plan to boost productivity, by backing businesses and investing in skills, industries and infrastructure.

This growth will be driven by innovation and higher productivity - both in those emerging sectors which will harness transformative technologies, and in sectors that have historically driven the economy. It will be inclusive, place sensitive and sustainable, responding to increasing concerns around climate change, and will enhance the natural environment and the quality of life for everyone in Oxfordshire.

Building a global innovation ecosystem: Oxfordshire in 2040

This Local Industrial Strategy is framed by Oxfordshire’s ambition to be a top 3 global innovation ecosystem by 2040.

Oxfordshire will achieve this through developing the 5 foundations of productivity, as set out in the national Industrial Strategy, and by building on the county’s world-leading science and technology clusters.

This will knit together the existing strengths of the county – in the historic academic assets in the City of Oxford, within dynamic and creative residential communities, and across its science and technology parks throughout Oxfordshire – into a coherent network, able to exploit the latest technologies.

As well as supporting ‘breakthrough’ firms, this will enable growth in the ‘cornerstone’ local businesses that form the backbone of the Oxfordshire economy, providing jobs, essential services and supply chains across the innovation ecosystem and delivering growth in the UK as a whole.

Oxfordshire in 2019

Oxfordshire has one of the strongest economies in the UK, contributing £23 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK exchequer in 2017. It is also rapidly growing at an average of 3.9% growth year-on-year since 2006

The county has significant assets in research and development (‘R&D’) being home to the top performing university in the world, the University of Oxford, as well as Oxford Brookes, a leading university in the UK for teaching and research. These anchor institutions support an international brand that draws talent and investment to both the City of Oxford and across Oxfordshire in the number of science, innovation,technology and business parks located in the county. The Oxfordshire knowledge-led economy generates the highest number of university spin-out companies in the UK, underlining its importance to the national economy.

However, despite Oxfordshire’s many strengths, it has low productivity relative to many peers. Whilst the region’s productivity per hour worked is above average for England, in recent years it has fallen below the south east. Moreover, as Oxfordshire’s economy grows there is an increased strain on the county’s infrastructure. Housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable and rail, road and energy infrastructure are not sufficient to meet rising demand.

This also places it at an increasing disadvantage to its international competitor locations in attracting foreign investors, talent and business investment.

This Local Industrial Strategy recognises these challenges to the Oxfordshire economy and sets out the opportunity to ensure that this growth is coordinated county-wide. It sits alongside the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, agreed with government in 2017, which sets out the commitment to deliver 100,000 new homes across the county before 2031 as well as improvements in necessary accompanying infrastructure. This strategy looks to integrate the county’s leading R&D and innovation assets into future housing and infrastructure. This will provide pioneering solutions to deliver transformative and sustainable neighbourhoods that prepare communities for the future and make Oxfordshire a clean and prosperous place to live and work.

Ideas

Oxfordshire is a global centre of research and innovation. The county is home to 2 renowned universities – the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes – and a number of world-leading science, innovation, technology and business parks. This hive of knowledgeintensive economic activity attracts international talent and investment and encourages the highest intensity of university spin-outs in the UK.

This engine of innovation in Oxfordshire also benefits the wider UK and is key in building innovation excellence across the country and competing globally for investment and talent.

This Local Industrial Strategy looks to build on these strengths and assets to drive R&D and innovation across the region as a pioneering contributor to the Industrial Strategy’s target for national R&D spending to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027, and 3% in the longer term.

For Oxfordshire to reach this ambition, this Local Industrial Strategy recognises that the county needs to develop its physical, digital, financial, knowledge and social infrastructure to foster a successful innovation ecosystem that competes at a global level. This means ensuring that there is a sufficient pool of leadership talent, funding and business premises to support growing businesses. Oxfordshire will therefore support the transformation of science and technology parks, and the potential creation of a new Global Business District as part of the Oxford Station quarter. Additionally, it prioritises local investment in the breakthrough technologies set out in the Oxfordshire Science and Innovation Audit and this Local Industrial Strategy to accommodate fast-growing businesses. The county will also set out a distinctive global brand to raise Oxfordshire, and the Oxford – Cambridge Arc’s, international profile for innovation and R&D to attract more investors and talent.

This will include the launch of the ‘Connecting Globally’ platform, a digital platform to showcase success across the region and facilitate collaboration with other global innovation ecosystems.

People

Oxfordshire has a highly skilled workforce, with 51% of the working age population educated to degree level or above. The county’s unemployment rate is over 50% lower than the UK average, at 1.3% compared to 2.7% nationally. However, the county has pockets of significant deprivation and wage disparity.

The priority in this Local Industrial Strategy is to build a skills system that better responds to local demand, which provides a range of opportunities for all across the county. This will help develop a more responsive skills ecosystem to support our innovation ambitions. Oxfordshire will take forward a series of measures to support business engagement with the skills system through the development of an Oxfordshire Social Contract, including:

• establishing a Skills Advisory Panel for Oxfordshire
• championing T levels locally, so that they map to the county’s technology sectors and support local employers to deliver industry placements and develop new apprenticeships
• establishing an Oxfordshire Entrepreneurship Hub to support students and young people across the county to develop business propositions and develop connections across the innovation ecosystem
• working with the Careers and Enterprise Company, local colleges and Oxfordshire County Council, to improve social mobility for young people by ensuring they will have greater access to career pathways within Oxfordshire
• developing OxLife, a targeted programme to reskill and upskill older workers and armed forces personnel, returning to the Oxfordshire workforce, so that they can actively engage in the new innovation economy
• driving growth in apprenticeships and maximise local take up of the apprenticeship levy through working with local employers to maximise their usage of their levy allocation
• working through the Oxfordshire Growth Board to convene local leaders, academic experts, businesses and community organisations to form an Inclusive Growth Commission. This will consider how Oxfordshire can ensure that the benefits of a world leading innovation ecosystem can be equitably shared and reach all communities, learning from other global ecosystems

Infrastructure

Oxfordshire has strong transport links along the Bristol-Birmingham-London corridors and enjoys close proximity to Heathrow and Birmingham airports. The county is committed to improving links across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc with the development of the East-West Rail scheme. However, a growing economy and population is putting strain on rail and road infrastructure, as well as the energy sector. Housing also faces rising demand and affordability pressures. In order for Oxfordshire to deliver on the vision to be a world-leading innovation ecosystem, it must continue to work with government to develop resilient infrastructure that can respond to future demands and is sustainable for the environment.

Oxfordshire will do this by:

• identifying opportunities to progress the ambitions in the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy, supporting local plans to improve rail and roads across the area and make space for sustainable, multi-modal transport
• working to realise the ambitions of the Oxfordshire Energy Strategy using local funding streams, to harness the opportunities of clean growth and put in place a low carbon energy grid that supports business growth and leads to the development of pioneering new models of energy management and the application of ground breaking battery technologies
• developing an ambitious Digital Investment Plan to provide world leading digital coverage

Government is supporting these initiatives through investment in East-West Rail and the Expressway and by offering policy support on the development of the Oxfordshire Digital Investment Plan.

Business environment

Oxfordshire is home to thousands of great businesses and is one of the strongest engines for growth in the UK. With over 31,000 VAT registered businesses across a broad range of sectors. Oxfordshire has a well-balanced, resilient economy which has been instrumental to its track record of continued growth.

However, many firms continue to struggle to grow to scale and do not translate ideas into business growth as well as some other competitor locations.

This Local Industrial Strategy looks to address identified challenges (including access to premises and finance) to ensure the region can maximise its commercial and innovative potential. Oxfordshire will enhance its business support offer through the Growth Hub to develop a world class ‘Scale Up’ programme that provides a single, coordinated and collaborative service that delivers dedicated support for high growth potential breakthrough businesses. Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership will establish an ‘Oxfordshire Finance Hub’ as part of the Growth Hub, to help firms access finance, and will seek further opportunities to attract institutional investors such as Sovereign Wealth Funds into the area.

Government will support this by working closely with Oxfordshire to develop an Internationalisation Delivery Plan to expand on the county’s global brand and attract trade and investment opportunities to support business growth.

Places

Oxfordshire has a wealth of assets in research, innovation, natural capital and cultural heritage.

Towns and villages across the county are vibrant and distinct, driving a strong and growing tourism industry attracting over 30 million visitors a year to Oxfordshire. The county is also an increasingly attractive place to live and work, but this success, however, is putting strain on the county’s infrastructure – compounded by flooding and environmental issues that limit housing developments.

The vision set out in this Local Industrial Strategy, therefore, is designed to help the county retain its distinctive character, while seizing the opportunities of the 21st century. It provides Oxfordshire with the opportunity to innovate in place-making, building healthy and sustainable communities that are technology-enabled, improve quality of life, and utilise innovative solutions to the challenges of modern living and respond to the increasing concerns around climate change.

Oxfordshire’s communities themselves have the opportunity to become exemplars of contemporary living - preparing for technological and environmental change, whilst retaining natural landscape and a high-quality living experience.

This will be based on developing new technologies with private sector partners, coordinated by multidisciplinary teams to respond to the Grand Challenges as set out in the Industrial Strategy.

In addition, government will work in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of these new housing communities, not least through the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, and through other initiatives such as the Local Growth Fund and the Housing Infrastructure Fund. Government also recognises the importance of natural capital assets across the county, including its 3 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and 7 Special Areas of Conservation.

Working across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc

This strategy is 1 of a family of 4 linked strategies covering the Oxford-Cambridge Arc (‘the Arc’), with the other strategies covering, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the South East Midlands. It therefore includes a summary of the wider economic context and identifies those priorities within each Local Industrial Strategy which can be developed at scale across the Arc, complementing the specific Oxfordshire strategic objectives which sit at the heart of this strategy. This includes:

• working together collaboratively across all of the foundations of productivity to ensure that the implementation of the 4 Local Industrial Strategies maximises the economic potential of the wider Arc region
• harnessing the collective strength of the Arc’s research base – driving greater collaboration on science and research; and growing the role of the Arc as a global research and innovation hub
• bringing employers and skills providers together to understand the current and future skills needs, and planning provision to meet them
• maximising the economic benefits of new transport, energy and digital infrastructure within the Arc
• developing an improved business support and finance programme for high growth companies, a shared approach to commercial premises and an Internationalisation Delivery Plan to encourage greater trade and inward investment in the Arc
• embodying government’s 25 year Environment Plan and contributing to the Clean Growth Grand Challenge Mission to halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030

Together, the strategies reflect the close collaboration and partnership working between Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) across the region.

Introduction

Oxfordshire is one of Britain’s success stories.

It has one of the highest concentrations of innovation assets in the world with universities and science, technology and business parks which are at the forefront of global innovation in transformative technologies and sectors such as fusion technology, autonomous vehicles, quantum computing, cryogenics, space, life sciences and digital health.

The economy is high-skilled, knowledgeled and dynamic. The county is one of the most popular places in the country to live, visit, and pioneer new industries; the markets for these technologies are increasingly global and are set for rapid growth between now and 2040. Oxfordshire has already created a number of high-tech companies that have been valued at over US$1billion, which is testament to the ability of the innovation ecosystem to nurture and spin out companies. This success is not limited to the City of Oxford: the region also has some of the highest levels of productivity for agriculture, and an increasingly mature network of business hubs throughout the county.

Oxfordshire can leverage these strengths to become 1 of the top 3 innovation ecosystems globally by 2040. That means ensuring research strengths are developed and deepened further; that they accelerate the translation into business innovation and rising productivity outside the gates of science parks; and that this is delivered while enhancing, rather than compromising, cultural, social and environmental assets.

This Local Industrial Strategy recognises and responds to the challenges facing Oxfordshire: its relative wealth and success disguises lower productivity than elsewhere in the south east, due to longer hours worked; a stagnating or declining working age population; and housing affordability in the region which is among the worst in the country, driving deprivation in some areas. The fact that housing affordability varies across the region suggests simply building more homes won’t be enough: they need to be in the right areas, and with advanced transport links to ensure residents can make the most of the economic opportunities the region offers.

Potentially transformative change is taking place in Oxfordshire. The Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, agreed with government in 2017, committed up to £215 million of national government investment into the county for infrastructure and affordable homes to assist in achieving the ambition of planning and delivering up to 100,000 new homes in the county by 2031.

Alongside this a Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, coordinating all local authorities to ensure a county-wide, integrated, sustainable planning framework to 2050 is being prepared for submission in 2021. Taken together, this also offers the catalyst for significant transformation across the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc.

This Local Industrial Strategy is based on a partnership between representatives of Oxfordshire’s businesses, universities, education bodies, local authorities and the government. It presents a longterm framework against which private and public sector investment decisions can be assessed, grouped around the 5 foundations of productivity:

• Ideas: Establish a globally connected and competitive innovation economy
• People: Develop a more responsive skills ecosystem creating better opportunities for all
• Infrastructure: Enable greater connectivity and accessibility especially across key growth locations
• Business environment: Become a powerhouse for commercialising transformative technologies
• Places: Develop Oxfordshire as a living laboratory to help solve the UK’s Grand Challenges

Figure 1: Foundations of Productivity

Ideas

Establish a globally connected innovation economy:

• drive up R&D investment
• support transformation of science and technology parks and develop new hubs
• establish a ‘Connecting Globally’ Platform to facilitate collaboration with other global innovation ecosystems
• progressing Oxfordshire Internationalisation Plan

People

Develop a more responsive skill system creating better opportunities for all:

• establish a Skills Advisory panel
• champion T Levels
• maximise use of Apprenticeship Levy
• establish an Oxfordshire Entrepreneurship Hub to support development of business propositions
• create pathways and social mobility for young people
• support reskilling through OxLife
• form an Inclusive Growth Commission

Infrastructure

Enable greater connectivity and accessibility especially across key growth locations:

• identify opportunities to progress the ambitions of the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy
• develop an ambitious Digital Investment Plan, working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and national and regional partners
• realise ambitions set out in the Oxfordshire Energy Strategy

Business environment

Become a powerhouse for commercialising transformative technologies:

• enhance the Oxfordshire Growth Hub
• establish a scale up programme to support high growth businesses to expand rapidly
• establish an Oxfordshire Finance Hub to support access to finance
• establish an investment case to attract Wealth Fund investment

Places

Develop Oxfordshire as a living laboratory to help solve the UK’s Grand Challenges:

• establish a Clean Growth Living Lab
• establish a Data and Mobility Living Lab
• establish a Health and Wellbeing Living Lab

Oxford-Cambridge Arc: economic context

Oxfordshire and the Oxford-Cambridge Arc

This Local Industrial Strategy for Oxfordshire articulates government and local partners’ shared ambitions for the area at a sub-regional level, outlining how specific interventions in the local area will drive future growth in Oxfordshire and across the Arc more widely.

These local ambitions sit alongside a range of work which will be progressed collectively at an Arc level.

Each of the Local Industrial Strategies across the Arc should be read as ‘local chapters’ of the national Industrial Strategy - outlining not only the ambitions for the local areas, but also how their strengths and assets will contribute to national objectives.

The economic opportunity presented by the Arc is significant. But it will not happen by itself. It will take concerted and coordinated work by both government and the local areas to ensure that the Arc remains an economic asset of international standing over the coming decades. This Local Industrial Strategy for Oxfordshire published alongside those for Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the South East Midlands, shows how this will be done.

Introduction to the Arc

The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is a world leading economic area, underpinned by a high-quality environment, which has the potential to deliver transformational growth that will create jobs and boost local and regional economies for the benefit of existing and future communities. It currently has 3.7 million residents and over 2 million jobs, contributing £111 billion GVA annually to the UK economy^{[footnote 1]} and the transformative economic potential to contribute around £191.5 billion by 2050. It is a highly productive and prosperous region with global strengths in science, technology and high-value manufacturing.

The Arc covers the ceremonial counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. The economic landscape is covered by the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnerships and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayoral Combined Authority’s Business Board.

Figure 2: Map of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc

View a larger version of figure 2.

The Arc as a whole is a strongly knowledge-intensive economy. It contains 10 diverse universities^{[footnote 2]}, including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 2 of the world’s greatest and most internationally recognisable centres of learning, and a network of cutting-edge science parks, research institutions, businesses and incubators.

The Arc is home to world-leading R&D and is already renowned as a place of global firsts – pioneering cures for disease, forging breakthroughs in engine technology, innovation in future energy and transport systems, and developing world-leading strengths in technologies that are shaping the twenty-first century. But it has the ambition and ability to go further. Its continued success will be critical if the UK is to meet its target of 2.4% of GDP being spent on R&D by 2027 and its knowledge and innovation assets enable the area to be world-leading in industries that have rapidly growing global markets.

The Arc today: Key growth sectors

Transformational growth of the scale envisaged across the Arc will need to build on the breadth of existing assets and strengths found across the local area.

The Arc is home to 2 globally renowned life sciences clusters in Oxford and Cambridge – the most productive life sciences clusters in Europe, which already compete internationally with the global leaders in San Francisco and Boston, Massachusetts. These clusters feature prominently in the UK’s Life Science Sector Deals, published in 2017 and 2018. The Cambridge life sciences cluster alone is home to over 400 companies, with 15,500 employees and contributing around £2.9 billion annually to the UK economy^{[footnote 3]}. Oxfordshire is home to a world-leading bioscience cluster, with an estimated 180 R&D companies and over 150 companies in associated industries. It has world-class R&D facilities, with 4 new innovation centres at the Oxford BioEscalator, the Begbroke Accelerator, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus and Culham Science Centre. Buckinghamshire is also home to a growing med-tech sector and the county also houses national facilities such as the spinal centre in Stoke Mandeville.

The Arc has significant strengths in the space and satellite sector. The Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire comprises over 90 space organisations employing nearly 1,000 people and is the largest space cluster in Europe incorporating the European Space Agency, the Space Applications Catapult and the National Satellite Testing Facility. This is complemented by Westcott Venture Park in Aylesbury Vale with a growing space cluster with particular strengths in upstream space, and also home to the National UK Propulsion Test Facility. In aerospace, Central Bedfordshire’s Cranfield University, which is home to the Aerospace Integration Research Centre and the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute, is building a Digital Aviation Research and Technology Centre that will spearhead the UK’s research into digital aviation technology.

The Arc is a world leader in advanced manufacturing, with particular specialisms in high-performance technology and motorsport engineering. Silverstone is home to 40 advanced manufacturing companies, testing facilities for materials and vehicles and the iconic F1 Circuit. More widely, there are over 4,000 businesses operating in ‘Motorsport Valley’^{[footnote 4]} , which extends from Northamptonshire into Oxfordshire and beyond – a £6 billion global cluster of automotive, motorsport and advanced manufacturing companies.

The Future of Mobility features heavily across the Arc as a whole, specifically in the research, development and commercialisation of Connected and Autonomous vehicles (CAV). Key assets include the RACE Centre at Culham Science Centre, which is a UK centre of excellence in robotics and autonomous systems, Millbrook Proving Ground in Central Bedfordshire and, at Milton Keynes, a hub of the Connected Places Catapult and the UK Autodrive project.

There are several leading creative and digital clusters within the Arc. In Buckinghamshire, Pinewood Studios and the National Film and Television School comprise 2 globally renowned state-of-the-art facilities. Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Cambridge, Luton, Northampton, Oxford, High Wycombe, South Bucks and Aylesbury all have highly concentrated creative and digital clusters with diverse specialisations. Oxfordshire is home to a range of strengths including computer games, software development, cybersecurity, high performance computing as well as film and TV including the new £78 million studio facilities at Didcot opened by Rebellion. In Cambridge, the information and digital technologies cluster is highly concentrated, with a strong track record of establishing and growing globally significant companies. This high concentration of modern, creative, industries, have led to Arc businesses featuring heavily in the UK’s Creative Industries Sector Deal.

Policy context

Recognising the importance of the area and the opportunity it provides for the UK, the government has already made significant investment to support local growth and productivity in the Arc over recent years. This has included:

• committing over £400 million of Local Growth Funding to the LEPs in the Arc from 2015/16 to 2020/21, to fund growth enabling projects
• agreeing over £800 million of funding for economic growth, transport and skills through the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Devolution Deal
• continuing to invest in the 4 LEPs’ Growth Hubs to provide business support across the Arc and investment in the Greater South East Energy Hub
• supporting the accelerated development of key sites through our Enterprise Zone programme, including in Science Vale, Northampton Waterside, Aylesbury Vale and Alconbury Weald
• investing, through Innovate UK, £670 million in 1000 businesses in the Arc since 2010 to help them develop and innovate new products and services

It was part of recognising the national importance of the Arc that, in 2016, the government commissioned the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) to undertake a study to strengthen our collective understanding of the area’s economic growth potential. The NIC published its report^{[footnote 5]} – Partnering for Prosperity: A new deal for the Cambridge–Milton Keynes– Oxford Arc – in 2017, concluding that, with the right interventions, the Arc could harbour transformational growth, even against its existing levels of output. It explained that meeting this long-term potential would require both significantly more homes to be built and improvements in east-west transport connectivity.

In its response to the NIC report^{[footnote 6]}, published in 2018, the government designated the Arc as a key economic priority, outlining a breadth of actions to seize the opportunity for growth identified in the NIC’s report. The government also affirmed its ambition to deliver more homes in the Arc, supported by measures such as the £215 million Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal and the recent confirmation of £445 million Housing Infrastructure Funding for the Arc. The government has committed to deliver transformational infrastructure projects to improve eastwest connectivity across the Arc, most notably by completing the £1 billion East West Rail scheme and the Expressway. Government is also working with partners to identify what utilities, digital and environmental infrastructure, planning and investment is required. Importantly, the government’s response to the NIC recognised that delivering ambitious growth on this scale had to go hand in hand with environmental enhancement to maximise the benefits to local people, leaving the environment in a better state for future generations.

Since then, the government and local leaders have been working in partnership across the Arc to match the level of ambition for the area. This includes working collaboratively to realise the area’s potential through 4 inter-related policy pillars:

• Productivity – ensuring businesses are supported to maximise the Arc’s economic prosperity, including the skills needed to enable communities to benefit from the jobs created
• Place-making – creating places valued by local communities, through the delivery of sufficient, affordable and high-quality homes, to increase affordability and support growth in the Arc, as well as wider services including health and education
• Connectivity – delivering the infrastructure communities need, including transport and digital connectivity, as well as utilities; and
• Environment – investing in environmental infrastructure and ensuring growth leaves the environment in a better state for future generations.

Oxfordshire in 2019

Oxfordshire is a unique economy in its own right and a core part of the Oxford Cambridge Arc. This chapter sets out further context on the opportunities and challenges facing the county’s economy, and the policy framework under which they are being addressed.

Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) has produced 2 detailed reports setting out the current state of the Oxfordshire economy and future growth potential. These reports sit alongside and inform the approach outlined in this Local Industrial Strategy. They are:

• The Baseline Economic Review, exploring how Oxfordshire has performed relative to the UK as a whole, as well as the relative performance of each district authority and different types of businesses^{[footnote 7]} and sectors within the county
• The Future State Assessment which sets out what Oxfordshire has the potential to achieve and what being a ‘top 3 global innovation ecosystem’ could mean for the County, as well as detail on the key industries in which Oxfordshire can be globally competitive. It details an ambitious economic growth agenda for Oxfordshire, along with a spatial vision to ensure that growth in the County is achievable and sustainable.

An Investment Prospectus to underpin the Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy, allowing both public and private investors to understand how they can invest in Oxfordshire to enable the region to achieve its growth potential, will be developed during 2019/20.

Oxfordshire’s economic strength

Oxfordshire has one of the strongest economies in the UK. It is a net contributor to the UK exchequer, contributing £23 billion GVA in real terms in 2017. It is also rapidly growing, with an average growth of 3.9% growth year-on-year in nominal terms since 2006. Oxfordshire is home to around 678,000 people and 31,000 VAT registered businesses, including a high concentration of technology-based businesses that are at the forefront of global innovation. The region is home to the University of Oxford, the top performing university in the world, as well as Oxford Brookes, one of the leading young universities in the UK for teaching and research.

Oxfordshire has the highest intensity of university spin out companies in the country. The University of Oxford continues to generate more spin-outs than any other university nationally. Between 2014 and 2015, a total of 136 spin-out companies generated approximately £147 million of GVA, supporting 2,421 jobs in the Oxfordshire economy. On a per-head basis, the output of local workers is in the top 20% of English regions, and Oxfordshire is leading the way in the UK for ‘good growth’ – Oxford is the highest ranking city in the UK in PwC’s 2018 Good Growth for Cities report, which measures the performance of cities against key economic and wellbeing indicators, such as employment, health, income and skills.

This impressive track record of growth has been delivered through close partnership working between government, local authorities, business leaders and universities. Over £600 million worth of government and European funds have been secured through Growth Deals, a City Deal, European Structural Investment Funds and Infrastructure Funds – all part of an overall investment programme in Oxfordshire worth £2.2 billion.

Figure 3: Overview of the Oxfordshire Economy

Economy

£23bn GVA generated in real terms each year

3.9% GVA growth in nominal term year-on-year since 2006

1 of 3 County areas which are net contributors to the UK exchequer

Population

51% of working age population educated to degree level or above

1.3% unemployment rate in the working age population

The Baseline Economic Review

The Baseline Economic Review sets out the macro-economy of Oxfordshire:

• The Oxfordshire economy supports 417,000 jobs and 31,000 VAT registered businesses
• 160,000 people live in Oxford
• Employment is very high across Oxfordshire with the participation rate being is 82%, compared to 75% for UK and 79% for south east
• Output growth has continued to be strong since the financial crisis (3.9% per annum since 2007), well above national averages. Even during the last recession Oxfordshire continued to grow. Total output per worker is 20% above the UK average.

Strengths

1st Oxford University rank in Times Higher Education global rankings 2018

£600m largest fund for university spin outs in Europe: Oxford Sciences Innovation

$1bn track record of growing businesses with market values of over US$1bn

30m visitors to Oxfordshire each year, many of them international

50,000 new jobs created since 2011/12

Challenges

50% higher median house prices than the English average

7% full fibre rollout, well behind many international competitors

3% annual growth in apprenticeships, well below the UK average of 12.5%

55% increase in population aged over 85 by 2031

• Wage growth tracked UK and South East averages from 2007, but has accelerated above the national averages since 2014, rising at twice the rate of the UK. This is true even adjusting for house prices
• Despite this, productivity in Oxfordshire is slightly below the south east average. Oxford itself has the lowest productivity rate (measured as value add per hour worked) of the 5 authorities. South and West Oxfordshire perform well (at 47th and 48th of 379 local authorities). Oxfordshire’s high incomes therefore imply that its residents are working longer hours than others elsewhere
• With the exception of the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire’s population has been roughly stable or in decline since 2014 – the Vale of White Horse has seen substantial growth. Oxfordshire is already ‘older’ than the UK average and will continue to age at comparable rates

Oxfordshire is rightly ambitious to be a leading economic region not just in the UK, but globally. However, future growth is being put at risk by a number of critical challenges that need to be addressed. Physical and digital connectivity lags behind global competitors, and housing affordability and the rising cost of living is detracting from Oxfordshire’s quality of life. The economy is dependent on a highly skilled workforce that is at risk as the population changes – requiring more action to nurture, attract and retain talent aligned to business needs. Oxfordshire has pockets of both urban and rural deprivation, and inequality. This Local Industrial Strategy aims to respond to this challenge and to address inclusive growth opportunities for all of our residents and businesses across the county.

To maximise the potential of the region, investors need to be encouraged to look beyond the university system to the breadth of world-class assets and knowledge-based strengths that Oxfordshire is home to - for example, Culham Science Centre, Harwell Campus and other world-leading assets and locations in the region.

Finally, despite its many strengths, Oxfordshire has its own ‘productivity puzzle’, underperforming relative to many peer regions. The ultimate objective of this Local Industrial Strategy is to raise productivity, and the 5 chapters dedicated to the foundations of productivity below set out further analysis and opportunities to solve that puzzle.

Figure 4: Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy

UK Industrial Strategy	Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal
The UK Industrial Strategy is a region-led approach to growth. It seeks to boost Britain’s productivity and raise living standards by: - Strengthening the foundations of productivity - Building long term strategic partnerships between industry and government through sector deals - Inviting business, academia and civil society to tackle the Grand Challenges, to ensure the UK takes advantage of global trends and industries of the future	The recent Housing and Growth Deal has secured an initial £215 million of investment over the next 5 years to build the infrastructure and homes we need to thrive. As part of the deal we have committed to: - plan for and support the delivery of 100,000 homes by 2031 - develop a Joint Statutory Spatial Plan - unlock enabling infrastructure - produce the Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy as a headline commitment under the productivity strand of the Deal
Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy	Existing and emerging strategies
This Oxfordshire Industrial Strategy is one of the first Local Industrial Strategies to be developed and sets out how we can take forward these ambitions. Foundations of productivity: - Ideas: to be the world’s most innovative economy - People: to promote a diverse and inclusive economy with good jobs and greater earning power for all - Infrastructure: a major upgrade to the UK’s infrastructure - Business environment: to be the best place to start and grow a business Places: to have prosperous communities across the UK Grand Challenges: - Growing the artificial intelligence and data driven economy - Shifting towards clean growth - Shaping the future of mobility - Meeting the needs of an ageing society	The Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy will align to and build on a number of existing and emerging strategies. These include: - 2016 Strategic Economic Plan and sister strategies e.g. Skills, Innovation and Creative, Culture, Heritage and Tourism. - Oxfordshire Plan 2050 (Joint Statutory Spatial Plan) - Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (and NIC First Mile/Last Mile 2050 plan) - 2017 Science and Innovation Audit - Oxfordshire’s Local Transport Plan 5 - Oxfordshire Rail Connectivity Study - The Local Plans for housing and development for each District - Oxfordshire Energy Strategy ,br>- Oxford – Cambridge Arc Economic Vision - Oxfordshire Joint Health & Wellbeing Strategy

Figure 5: Oxfordshire’s critical economic sectors, assets and growth opportunities within the innovation ecosystem

View a larger version of figure 5

1. Upper Heyford Creative City key sectors: creative industries inc proposed 130 acres international film & tv studio complex

2. Motorsport Valley key sectors: advanced engineering, battery technology, high performance motorsport technologies

3. Oxford City Science Area key sectors: Life Sciences, AI Technologies, Digital Health, Quantum Computing, Global CBD
   
   - Oxford BioEscalator
   - Old Road Campus Medical Research Centre
   - John Radcliffe, Nuffield & Churchill Hospitals Quarter
   - Centre for Applied Semi-Conductivity
   - Oxford Science Park
   - Osney Innovation District
   - Oxford Northern Gateway
   - Oxford Station Quarter and Global Central Business District
   - Centre for Fusion Energy and Supply Chain Cluster
   - Remote Applications in Challenging Environment Centre (RACE)

4. Culham Science Park key sectors: Fusion Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems
   
   - Over 2000+world leading scientists on site working with UK strategic assets
   - Centre for Fusion Energy and Supply Chain Cluster
   - Remote Applications in Challenging Environment Centre (RACE)
   - 3500 homes proposed at adjacent Culham Smart Village providing testbed for new mobility solutions (linking with Harwell and Culham), digital health and smart technologies to deliver improved public service outcomes

5. Milton Park / Didcot Garden Town key sectors: Life Sciences, Creative Industries
   
   - 250+ high technology companies employing 9000+ people, encompassing leading life sciences cluster
   - EZ1 package of 9 separate development sites totalling 21ha
   - Adjacent to EZ2 Didcot Growth Accelerator offering grow on space across 102ha of land
   - Testing of new forms of mobility via Autonomous Vehicles pilot linked to Didcot Garden Town
   - International Film & TV Studios Hub anchored around Rebellion Studios development

6. Williams Innovation & Technology Campus key sectors: advanced engineering inc new high-performance technology campus cluster

7. Harwell Campus key sectors: Health Sciences (MedTech, life sciences, digital health), Space Applications, Energy:
   
   - 200+ world leading research and technology companies on site employing c6000 people
   - designated UK Space Agency gateway with Europe’s largest space cluster of 90 companies
   - location of critical UK strategic assets including Diamond Light Synchrotron, Medical Research Council, Public Health England
   - EZ1 development site of 93ha
   - proposed 1000 new homes as part of Harwell Innovation Village to pioneer solutions for grand challenges focused on clean growth and mobility

8. Living Labs Testbed Undertake smart living pilots at scale using emerging technologies integrated into major housing development to tackle Grand Challenges:
   
   - Bicester Garden Town 13,000 homes (inc healthy town and EcoTown)
   - Didcot Garden Town 15,000 homes
   - Oxfordshire Cotswolds Garden Village 2200 homes

9. Begbroke Science Park key sectors: advanced engineering, medical tech:
   
   - 60+ world leading research and technology companies employing 900+ staff
   - Begbroke Innovation Escalator spin out hub
   - Proposed 4000 homes as part of wider A44 corridor vision to double capacity at Begbroke including new station and linking to Oxford Airport and Oxford Parkway

Building a global innovation ecosystem: Oxfordshire in 2040

Oxfordshire’s Vision Statement

To position Oxfordshire as 1 of the top 3 global innovation ecosystems by 2040, building on the region’s world leading science and technology clusters to be a pioneer for the UK in emerging transformative technologies and sectors.

An ‘innovation ecosystem’ describes the large and diverse nature of participants and resources that are necessary for innovation. Typically, innovation ecosystems comprise a flourishing environment for innovation and business creation; world-leading experts in knowledge and technology development; and a dynamic, agile and skilled workforce.

Oxfordshire already has many of the ingredients for success. The University of Oxford is considered the best in the world, topping the Times’ Global University Rankings since 2016. Oxford Brookes University is a top performing young university in the UK for teaching and research.

This provides a ready stream of globally-competitive graduates, post-graduates and researchers in world-leading science, technology and humanities. The region is internationally connected through swift rail links to international airports. Quality of life is already very high.

The Future State Assessment compares Oxfordshire to similar areas in other countries – from Silicon Valley in the USA, Helsinki in Finland and Tel Aviv in Israel to Pangyo Techno Valley in South Korea and the Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing, China.

Innovation ecosystems have different trajectories of growth and have succeeded with different combinations of qualities and strengths, but they share a number of common characteristics (see figure 6). Innovation ecosystems also rely on a distinction between ‘Cornerstones Businesses’ – forming the backbone of the ecosystem, providing jobs and critical services to high-technology businesses – and ‘Breakthrough Businesses’. The following chapters set out how Oxfordshire will develop these characteristics in the county.

Figure 6: Building a world-leading innovation ecosystem

Iconic Brand It is essential for a globally-leading innovation ecosystem to have a distinctive proposition and a strong vision that differentiates itself from other ecosystems, around which citizens, businesses, leaders and investors can unite.

Liveable Place To attract people, business and investment, an innovation ecosystem needs to have thriving communities. These must be healthy, sustainable, provide a high quality of life, and support both urban and rural living. They must be affordable, well connected, and have a vibrant community and cultural offer.

Strong Financing Availability of finance is essential to creating and commercialising innovation, scaling spin-outs and investing in the talent and infrastructure necessary for innovation to flourish. Investment can come from a number of sources.

Commercial Culture A strong commercial culture is an environment in which entrepreneurship, investment and innovation thrives. It covers broad factors such as regulation and competition, as well as cultures of collaboration and knowledge exchange that encourage innovation and commercialisation.

Keystone Assets An innovation ecosystem must be anchored by national or international keystone assets – these can range from education institutes, national research facilities, world-class industry clusters and knowledge-intensive assets.

Talent Proposition Talent is integral to the innovation ecosystem. A strong innovation ecosystem must have the ability to attract and retain world-class talent, as well as nurture the talent and skills of its own citizens, developing skills aligned to business need and across a number of sectors.

Oxfordshire’s breakthrough sectors

Oxfordshire thinks globally. This level of ambition stems from national and international leadership in transformative industries. These industries are shaping the twenty first century and expect rapid growth in the coming decades. As well as providing a home for these industries, Oxfordshire’s research strengths give it global leadership on many underpinning technologies – ensuring the county is well-placed to capitalise on future industries too.

The 2017 Oxfordshire Science and Innovation Audit and the Future State Assessment sets out 8 emerging sectors where Oxfordshire has particular research and industrial strengths.

These emerging industries will provide jobs for generations, providing a sustainable economic base for Oxfordshire and the country through the twenty first century.

In addition – as set out in the business environment chapter below – Oxfordshire is already demonstrating increasing success in turning ideas into businesses, helping them grow quickly, and retaining their talent locally rather than losing them to international competitors.

Case Study: Oxford Nanopore

Oxford Nanopore Technologies was originally spun out of the University of Oxford Chemistry department as Oxford Nanolabs, in 2005 and since its foundation it has established IP collaborations with twenty institutions including Harvard, Boston and the University of California. The company has developed and commercialises novel and highly disruptive DNA / RNA sequencing technology.

Unique in this rapidly-growing market, only Oxford Nanopore provides devices that are scalable from pocket size to providing population-scale sequencing, providing ‘long reads’ (conferring substantial biological benefits), real-time data streaming (for rapid, dynamic workflows), and interrogate the DNA or RNA molecules directly using electronics rather than light.

The current and potential applications of this technology are broad and potentially transformative. Following the launch of the MinION sequencer, nanopore sequencing is now being used for rapid cancer characterization, infectious disease diagnostics, food safety testing, population-scale genomics and myriad other uses.

To date, Oxford Nanopore has raised £451 million in funding from international investors and selling its technology into more than 80 countries. It is opening a new high-tech manufacturing facility at Harwell in 2019.

Factors in the ecosystem that have enabled growth:

• Proximity to world leading assets: Oxford Nanopore has grown to more than 450 employees worldwide, with its HQ at Oxford Science Park. The company has taken advantage of cutting-edge facilities available on Begbroke and the Oxford Science Park, as well as world class facilities suitable for manufacturing at Rutherford Appleton at Harwell Campus
• Acess to talent: Oxford is an attractive location for the most senior employees to the newest wave of talent who may be considering their first role or a transition from academia. The reputation as an intellectual centre of excellence, along with entertainment, schooling, culture and leisure facilities, supports the recruitment and retention of the best employees

Factors in the ecosystem that are constraining growth:

• Cost of living: With property and other expenses rising inexorably, Oxfordshire has an increasing affordability challenge which can make it more difficult to recruit, especially more junior staff
• Infrastructure: The A34 and other key routes are severely congested making access to key science parks and hubs increasingly challenging across Oxfordshire

Success in Oxfordshire will help the UK, as a whole, meet Industrial Strategy ambitions: leading on emerging technologies, raising the share of output that goes into R&D, and helping us all to respond to the Grand Challenges: an Ageing Society; Clean Growth; the Future of Mobility; and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data. The close links between Oxfordshire and other regions – the Arc, London, the West Midlands, West of England, and the M4 Corridor – will generate spill-over effects and supply chain opportunities across the UK.

Life sciences

Oxfordshire has one of the strongest life sciences clusters in Europe and is a global hub for life sciences entrepreneurship and business. The region hosts a broad range of strengths including med-tech, pharma, diagnostics, digital health and biomedical engineering, and is shaping the future of the industry using technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Oxfordshire is home to numerous national assets including the Rosalind Franklin Institute, the Big Data Institute and the Structural Genomics Consortium.

There are also clear strengths in commercialising life sciences innovation, with 3 companies that have previously been valued at over $1 billion: Oxford Nanopore; Immunocore; and Adaptimmune, and manufacturing opportunities demonstrated by the new Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre announced in the UK Life Sciences Sector Deal.

World leading businesses are supported by strong academic leadership and connections across the UK from Birmingham and Cambridge to Dundee as well as the Medicines Discovery Catapult in Alderly Park. Oxfordshire can help the UK compete with areas such as the Boston Metropolitan Area and the Research Triangle in North Carolina that uses its research capabilities to power biological and digital health breakthroughs.

Quantum computing

Oxfordshire is leading the way for the world in quantum readiness. Oxford University is leading a consortium of 9 UK universities to build the first Q20:20 Quantum Computer Demonstrator by 2020, gaining significant international advantages. Quantum businesses are being created locally, underpinned by technologies such as cryogenics and artificial intelligence that are in turn attracting top talent from across the world to Oxfordshire. Research will provide an opportunity for rapidly increasing links with the Birmingham- based Quantum Hub in Sensors and Metrology and Quantum Enhanced Imaging (QuantIC) Hub at Glasgow.

The UK has a strong global position in the race to develop quantum technologies, competing with the likes of Quantum Valley in Canada, Hefei in China, key tech firms, such as Google and IBM and start-ups such as Rigetti. Oxfordshire needs to continue to innovate in quantum technologies in partnership with other areas in the UK, if the country is to continue to compete internationally and attract global investment in these technologies and linked industries.

Space-led data applications

Harwell Campus is the heart of the UK’s space industry and the largest space cluster in Europe. It hosts over 90 organisations including the European Space Agency (ESA) Centre for Satellite Applications and Telecoms; the ESA Business Incubation Centre; the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s RAL Space Centre; and the Satellite Applications Catapult. The sector currently employs around a thousand people, primarily in high- value, knowledge-intensive roles.

By 2021 Oxfordshire will also be home to the UK National Satellite Test Facility. Oxfordshire organisations are involved in a wide range of space activities, from designing and building components and satellites to go into space, to developing end-user applications that utilise space data for a wide variety of sectors.

Space organisations in Oxfordshire are working closely with new space opportunities across Cornwall, Glasgow and the East Midlands and is integral to upstream satellite innovation from Airbus, Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd, the National Physical Laboratory and the Universities of Surrey and Southampton, with complementary satellite data analytical capability from the University of Portsmouth.

These assets are essential if the UK is to remain at the forefront of global competition and compete with the likes of Silicon Valley, which is home to the NASA-Ames Research Centre, and clusters in France, Germany and Beijing.

Development of Oxfordshire’s space sector is critical if the UK is to achieve its target market share of 10% of the global space market by 2030.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS)

Oxfordshire is at the heart of RAS activity in the UK, with RACE at Culham Science Centre a key UK centre of excellence. Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) are a vanguard application of RAS and will show us how robots can move people and goods more efficiently with far- reaching implications across industries.

Oxfordshire is at the forefront of CAV development: the Oxford Robotics Institute kick-started the UK’s CAV programme in 2010; their spin-out Oxbotica is leading a UK consortium to launch a fleet of driverless vehicles to drive from Oxford to London; and RACE is 1 of the 4 national CAV testbeds. Other companies in the CAV ecosystem include Zeta, Amev, Nominet, Latent Logic, Williams, Arrival, StreetDrone and FiveAI. Public sector innovation in CAV has been mirrored with Oxfordshire County Council being the first UK local authority to include CAVs in the local transport strategy and to have a dedicated CAV team, currently the largest in the UK.

Oxfordshire is at the centre of the @UK CAV testing area, with London and Birmingham at each end. The area includes public testing environments including the 5G innovation centre, and autonomous vehicles trials of Nissan (Cranfield), Oxbotica (Culham), Jaguar Land Rover (Coventry) and Volvo (Drive Me London).

RAS is predicted to impact 15% of UK GVA worth £266 billion to the UK economy by 2035.

Developing Oxfordshire’s RAS industry is essential to growth and to remaining globally significant, competing with areas such as Silicon Valley, where Uber, Google and Tesla are developing CAVs.

Cryogenics

Oxfordshire is the global leader in cryogenics – the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The blend of academic, research and industrial expertise makes Oxfordshire home to the most powerful concentration of cryogenic expertise in the world. Cryogenics is a critical enabling technology with sub-sectors such as cryocoolers, instrumentation and superconducting magnets. Cryogenic technologies underpins around 17% of the UK economy, including many of our high-growth sectors, particularly space, life sciences, energy and quantum computing.

Oxfordshire is responsible for the majority of the UK cryogenic sector which includes: the world-leading Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell Campus, which pioneered the development of a multifilament superconducting cable known as the ‘Rutherford Cable’; companies such as Innovative Cryogenic Engineering in Witney and Thames Cryogenics in Didcot, a world-leader in the manufacture and supply of cryogenic piping; and the University Technical College in Didcot, the first school globally to install a cryogenics lab.

Cryogenic technologies developed in Oxfordshire are manufactured across the UK in areas such as the north east of England, creating high value jobs.

Oxfordshire is world-leading in the sector but faces competition from a number of markets including the USA, Japan and France where governments are investing heavily in cryogenic sub-sectors, recognising the strategic importance of this technology.

Energy

Oxfordshire is at the forefront of innovation in energy technologies and systems of the future. The region has strengths in areas such as novel batteries; battery management systems; and data analytics through its wealth of energy businesses pioneering clean growth, including the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) and the Faraday Institution at Harwell Campus, which is home to 30 industry, academic and public organisations.

This is complemented by leading innovation in local grid systems in the county through Project LEO and the Energy SuperHub which are delivering pioneering smart energy management solutions, battery storage technologies and new low carbon ground source heating to residential and commercial properties.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is a lead participant in the co-ordinated EU fusion programme managed by EUROfusion and operates the largest fusion device in the world, JET. By hosting JET, UKAEA has developed globally unique fusion capability, which is creating high value jobs and exports across the country.

For example, the robotics capability at Culham has enabled major contracts worth more than £200 million to be won around the UK in the last few years, including supporting hundreds of jobs in the north west and north east. Oxfordshire is also home to Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion, 2 of the leading fusion start-up companies in the world.

Despite increasing competition from Japan and Canada, Oxfordshire’s unique assets and strengths have the capability to push the UK to the forefront of innovation.

Digital and creative

Over 3,000 digital and creative businesses are based in Oxfordshire generating £1.4 billion to the UK economy each year. Oxfordshire has strengths in a range of digital technologies, such as cyber security and data analytics – these transferable strengths enable the County to be world- leading across other industries from space to bio-tech and quantum.

Creative strengths range from animation and digital gaming to digital publishing and media. This has produced a number of spin-outs, notably Natural Motion which was recently acquired for US$500 million, and Rebellion which has recently announced a £78 million new film complex in Didcot creating 500 new jobs.

Oxfordshire collaborates within the UK across the Golden Triangle and with other areas such as Bristol where there are strong creative and digital entrepreneurial communities. Oxford Innovation has recently opened an innovation centre in West Belfast, Innovation Factory, to boost start-up development in the region.

The UK has a number of global competitors in this sector, particularly in the USA where tech and social media giants have disrupted the sector, as Alibaba has done in China. Helsinki is another key competitor, with strengths in digital and gaming, along with a strong start-up culture.

Motorsport

Oxfordshire is a critical part of the UK’s iconic ‘Motorsport Valley’, a £6 billion automotive global cluster of high- performance technology, motorsport and advanced engineering companies. Oxfordshire is home to a number of world-renowned motorsport names including Williams F1 in Grove, Renault Sport F1 in Chipping Norton and Prodrive and Haas in Banbury, as well as global supply chain companies such as SS Tube Technology and Lentus, and the iconic BMW MINI manufacturing plant.

Oxford’s universities are also world- leading centres for education in motorsport engineering, with Oxford Brookes providing race engineers for all the major Formula 1 teams. Oxfordshire has a number of research strengths, including in advanced engines and battery technology, where companies like Williams and Prodrive have been driving Oxfordshire to the forefront of global competition for over a decade. Williams is also responsible for the IP and research and development for HyperBat Joint Venture battery manufacturing which is based in Coventry, showing how our energy cluster generates additional growth across the UK.

Oxfordshire competes and collaborates globally in this industry, as an integral part of the UK’s dynamic motorsport cluster. There are over 4,000 businesses operating in ‘Motorsport Valley’, which extends from Oxfordshire and into Northamptonshire and beyond.

The 5 foundations of productivity

Ideas

Oxfordshire is a global centre of research and innovation. The region brings together the dense networks of excellent research, knowledge-intensive businesses and skilled workers that are essential to a successful innovation ecosystem.

The Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy affirms the area’s ambition to work with government as a pioneering contributor to the Industrial Strategy’s target for national R&D spending to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and 3% in the longer term.

This chapter sets out Oxfordshire’s approach to driving up R&D and innovation across the region and beyond. It prioritises:

• supporting universities, local authorities, investors and developers to deliver world-class science and innovation hubs throughout the county, to deepen collaboration and accelerate the commercialisation of new ideas. This will complement the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc economy
• driving local R&D investment and growth in the area’s breakthrough sectors and technologies
• in ternationalising Oxfordshire, connecting the region’s innovation to world-wide opportunities and ecosystems and broadening the established ‘brand’ of Oxford

Summary of ‘Ideas’ strengths and challenges

• Oxfordshire has long been a worldleading centre for research and innovation across a wide range of technologies and sectors
• It contains the University of Oxford, ranked number one in Europe for both research and commercialisation, significant national government investments (more £2 billion in internationally leading scientific facilities and assets) especially at Harwell and Culham, leading industry clusters in life sciences, scientific instrumentation and motorsport, and the largest investment fund for university spin-outs globally
• Oxfordshire local authorities collaborate closely with universities and local business to use local innovation to improve public service delivery. This provides a base for integrated approaches to address the Grand Challenges
• Many of the science and business parks are at capacity and lack sufficient commercial and innovation space. Innovative industries and businesses are world-leading but face significant competition from established global hubs and other challenger regions
• Oxfordshire’s brand currently centres on the university system and needs to be expanded to encompass the entirety and breadth of opportunities across the whole innovation ecosystem
• 1 of the top 2 barriers to growth for businesses in Oxfordshire is access to markets and customers internationally

World-leading assets

Oxfordshire combines the ingredients of a successful innovation ecosystem in a single place – exemplified by the breakthrough sectors and technologies set out in the ‘Building an Innovation Ecosystem’ chapter, above.

The region has a world leading research base. This includes 2 renowned universities – the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes – and high levels of R&D undertaken by the private sector. Ongoing investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) continues to support the area’s strengths. Oxfordshire’s business R&D spending is high, at £1,600 per capita (compared to £360 in London). This is the seventh highest rate of 42 uppertier authorities. Recent research by the Enterprise Research Centre has also put Oxfordshire as having the highest percentage of firms undertaking R&D activity of any local economic area.

The diversity of Oxfordshire’s business base, coupled with its ability to generate ‘unicorn’ firms (businesses achieving market valuation of US$1billion) at a rapid rate suggests this investment by the private sector in R&D is broad based, rather than depending on a small number of major firms, which predominates in other regions.

This is underpinned by excellent R&D and innovation infrastructure where Oxfordshire is home to a number of world-leading science, innovation, technology and business parks that form a hive of knowledge intensive economic activity and anchor the area’s strengths in breakthrough sectors. These include Begbroke Science Park in Cherwell, Milton Park, Oxford Science Park, and national labs in Culham Science Centre in South Oxfordshire, the Harwell Campus in Vale of the White Horse and the University Science Area in Oxford City. Public and private investment into Oxfordshire in recent years is bolstering innovation capability. The City Deal Programme and Local Growth Fund resulted in 4 new innovation centres: the BioEscalator at the Old Road Campus in Oxford, the Begbroke Accelerator, the Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) Centre at Culham Science Centre and the Innovation Centre at Harwell Campus. Each of which are now at capacity, underlining the huge demand for innovation space across the ecosystem. Oxfordshire has also received investment into 2 Enterprise Zones, which sit across Milton Park, Didcot and Harwell.

Government has also recognised the strategic importance of worldclass assets within Oxfordshire, having invested in key sectors to drive the UK’s leadership in new and emerging technologies through the national Industrial Strategy:

• £100 million for the Rosalind Franklin research institute at Harwell Campus to improve health through physical science innovation
• £65 million for the Faraday Institution at Harwell Campus, charged withtackling the global energy and battery storage challenge
• £99 million for a National Satellite Testing Facility at RAL Space at Harwell Campus
• £86 million for a National Fusion Technology Platform at Culham Science Centre
• £68.3 million for the Satellite Applications Catapult at Harwell Campus

Finally, Oxfordshire combines this research strength with the highest intensity of university spin-out companies in the country. The University of Oxford continues to generate more spin-outs than any other University in the country. There are currently 149 active start-ups and spin-outs from the University, with local ambition to accelerate this in coming years. Between 2014 and 2015, a total of 136 spin-out companies generated approximately £147 million of GVA, supporting 2,421 jobs in the Oxfordshire economy.

The county also has capacity to grow businesses to values of over US$1billion, such as Oxford Nanopore. It has significant research strengths to support future spin-outs, as set out in the breakthrough sectors section above.

These strengths do not just benefit the immediate county. Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem is a national asset that drives growth across the UK. Ideas that are born here do not stay in the county, and the collaborations between universities and businesses in Oxfordshire with those in other regions are key to building innovation excellence across the country. For example, R&D and innovation activity developed by the Space Cluster at Harwell is central to the development of manufacturing and supply chain opportunities in the South West, East Midlands and Scotland and are playing crucial roles in delivering new opportunities around spaceport and in-orbit launch services which will revolutionise satellite technologies. The success of Oxfordshire is key to attracting international talent and investment to the UK, as well as achieving the Industrial Strategy’s aim for the UK to be the world’s most innovative economy and driving up R&D investment.

Whilst these strengths provide a powerful engine to drive UK growth, Oxfordshire is aiming to compete with its global peers. To play its full role as a global innovation hub and to help meet the UK’s 2.4% R&D target, Oxfordshire must continue to be at the forefront for commercialising the ideas that it generates.

Case Study: Evox Therapeutics

Evox Therapeutics is a privately held, Oxford-based biotechnology company. It focuses on harnessing and engineering the natural delivery capabilities of exosomes to develop an entirely new class of therapeutics for the treatment of various severe diseases. Evox was founded in 2016 based on work coming out in part from Oxford University and received £10 million in seed funding from Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI). This funding allowed Evox to lease laboratory space in Oxford Science Park, advance R&D, and grow the team from 1 person to 30 over 18 months. In autumn 2018, Evox raised an additional £35 million funding from internationally-known venture capital investors, and re-investment from the University of Oxford and OSI. Evox anticipates future significant capital raises and further expansion of the team to over 100 employees as it continues to compete internationally.

Factors in the Oxfordshire ecosystem that have enabled growth:

• Access to world-class funding: OSI’s significant initial funding was critical to Evox’s ability to rapidly grow, attract global top talent and investors, and compete on an international stage. Access to more UK-based sources of significant funding, especially for later stages, would better enable companies to continue to grow.

Factors in the Oxfordshire ecosystem that have constrained growth:

• laboratory space: access to readily available lab space is a key constraint to growth. While Evox has been able to lease a space in Oxford Science Park, options to expand are limited. Lab space might not meet demand in Oxfordshire over the next 5 years as more companies are spun out of the universities
• connectivity: the science parks in Oxfordshire are challenging to serve with public transport. Science parks need to be better connected to multi-modal public transport options and with direct and easy access to the central rail station. This will help accommodate the expected growth and enable people to live in outlying communities with more affordable housing and easily commute to work.

Partners across the county will need to address a number of constraints facing Oxfordshire businesses looking to innovate and drive-up R&D.

The right leadership and funding

High growth potential businesses frequently struggle to secure long term patient capital – particularly at early stage investment points in the business lifecycle. Oxford University Innovation (OUI) has stated that the level and duration of available finance will need to be sustained over the long term, in order to maximise the commercial and competitive advantage that high growth companies can secure. Many Oxfordshire firms are simply unaware of the support available, or unable to access it. Firms continue to underutilise tax and other fiscal incentives available to accelerate the commercialisation of R&D. The Intellectual Property Office has highlighted a continued deficit in awareness and understanding among high growth firms of intellectual property (IP) ownership in international markets, and the necessary regulatory factors which need to be considered. Innovate UK analysis revealed that Oxfordshire firms across the ecosystem are also below average in their share of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funds and programmes, in comparison to the range and breadth of R&D assets in the region.

Due to the acceleration of spin outs, analysis from Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) notes the increasing importance (and growing deficit) of high-quality leadership, management and business strategy skills within the senior teams of firms. This may be a critical drag on the growth potential and scale-up plans of businesses competing in global markets and seeking to secure future stages in funding or collaboration, as well as increased risk of UK firms being sold or taken over by foreign competitors.

Discussions led by OUI with East and West Coast US investors have raised concerns about the perceived ability of high growth firms in the Oxfordshire innovation ecosystem to harness and access the talent required to scale up at pace, compared to other locations competing for investment such as Boston and San Francisco in the US and innovation hubs in the Far East. These ecosystems have a faster growing pipeline of researchers and postgraduates with the skills to commercialise ideas and offer a pool of talent which gives investors more confidence.

The county’s wider offer

Oxfordshire also faces a challenge with constraints on innovation space. While Oxfordshire has excellent R&D infrastructure, many of the science and business parks across the region are at capacity, particularly new laboratory facilities, clean rooms and flexible science working spaces.

Recent analysis by Bidwells noted that Oxfordshire’s critical hubs are struggling to respond to demand for new premises which is also resulting in record rental costs. OSI has highlighted that Oxfordshire currently has 15,000 sq ft of wet laboratory incubator space available to meet demand, compared to over 10 million sq ft in the Boston Metropolitan Area in Massachusetts.

Finally, Oxfordshire is globally renowned with a strong international brand centred on its world-leading university system. However, there is less visibility and awareness of the region’s other core assets, including its innovation, science and technology parks, and leading businesses. Oxfordshire’s brand needs to encompass the full breadth of the region’s offer, and to compete with international rivals who are investing heavily in brand building.

There are general challenges to all firms in the region that are addressed in other foundations – including connectivity, business space, housing affordability, and skill shortages – that will also affect innovative firms.

Delivering the vision

To address these challenges, partners across Oxfordshire will work together and with government and UKRI on the following priorities.

Firstly, Oxfordshire has a critical mass of innovation and R&D assets. But they are currently not acting as the full sum of their parts: both in collaboration and in providing space for businesses.

To support research and development across Oxfordshire, local partners will support the transformation of science and technology parks and creation of new hubs, by acting as a broker and supporting organisations to access local, regional, and national funds. This will be knitted-together by a tailored spatial approach, that recognises the contrasting roles of different assets in the county:

• Stage 1: Ideation. Research will be driven in and around core hubs, taking advantage of the universities and other research and professional assets
• Stage 2: Innovation corridor. Development will take place in growing clusters for testing and developing new businesses. These are primarily located within the existing innovation corridor which extends from Begbroke in the north to Harwell in the south
• Stage 3: Commercialisation region. A wide-reaching commercialisation area that extends to the whole of Oxfordshire acknowledging that business of different scales will contribute to growth from across the region, the Oxford-Cambridge Arc and the UK economy. This recognises the reality that not all of this growth needs to be captured within the boundaries of the county

Commercial space

Oxfordshire partners will examine options to meet its ambition to double the floor space at Culham, Begbroke and Harwell science parks – the latter of which requires land remediation through accelerating a programme of local and private funding, and support universities, local authorities and developers to deliver new, well-connected world-leading innovation hubs and clusters around key locations including Oxford Technology Centre at Kidlington, Bicester, Upper Heyford, West Oxfordshire and Grove.

Linked with this, Oxfordshire will look to leverage planned developments which can offer the potential for creating a major global business district of scale encompassing the Oxford Station and West End quarter, creating an iconic global gateway into the ecosystem for investors, visitors and leading talent. This will aim to meet the demand and interest of Fortune 500 and NASDAQ company R&D HQs to locate in the region. The comprehensive redevelopment could generate significant job creation for the county and major spill-over effects across the Arc and wider UK.

Prioritising breakthrough technologies

The huge growth potential of the breakthrough technologies set out in the Science and Innovation Audit and this Local Industrial Strategy – including quantum technologies, robotics and autonomous systems and space-led data applications give them a unique role in driving up R&D and innovation.

Oxfordshire will encourage university and business collaboration around these breakthrough sectors at all levels. This will include new linkages between the ecosystem’s network of global hubs and international clusters to harness the opportunities of increasing convergence of transformative technologies which will create new capacity for innovation and collaboration which can spearhead an acceleration in the commercialisation of these technologies.

Oxfordshire will also look to channel investment into its breakthrough sectors from a range of different sources, including successful bids into competitive public sector funding rounds, levering private sector funding and attracting international investment. This will be enhanced by increased collaboration between universities along the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, which will support each institution’s engagement with businesses as part of their preparation for the new Knowledge Exchange Framework.

In addition to this, the region will deepen greater engagement between Oxfordshire’s research institutions, universities and ‘cornerstone businesses’ to drive greater innovation into more mature sectors which can improve firm level productivity in these markets. The Business environment chapter sets out our approach to commercialising research in our breakthrough sectors and technologies.

Figure 7: Proposed network of global hubs and international clusters

Global Health & Life Sciences Quarter, Oxford	International Space Cluster, Harwell Campus
Global Business District, Oxford Station & West End	Global Quantum Computing Hub, Harwell Campus
Global Innovation Hub, Begbroke	Robotics & CAV UK Cluster, Culham Science Centre
Global EnergyTec Cluster, Oxfordshire-wide	Global Fusion Technology Cluster, Culham Science Centre
Oxford Science Park Quarter Cowley, Oxford	Bioscience and Technology Quarter, Milton Park
Global HealthTec Cluster, Harwell Campus	Williams Technology Campus, Grove
Carterton & RAF Brize Norton Industrial Hub, West Oxfordshire	West Oxfordshire Science Park, Eynsham
Bicester Eco Zone & Corporate HQ Hub, Cherwell	Banbury Industrial Zone, Cherwell
Creative City, Upper Heyford

A top global investment destination Oxfordshire will help make the UK a top destination for international R&D talent and investors. To build Oxfordshire’s international brand, local partners will:

• set out a distinctive brand to raise Oxfordshire and the Arc’s international profile for innovation and R&D, enabling the local area to seize new opportunities for international connectivity, trade and investment
• launch the Connecting Globally platform. This will include an integrated digital platform across online and social media, to showcase successes across the region; increase communication and knowledge exchange between firms; and to promote Oxfordshire as a major global hub for investors and innovators. Over time, Oxfordshire will work to build Connecting Globally into a programme to facilitate networking with other global innovation ecosystems, including through trade missions and sponsor visits
• work with the Intellectual Property Office to launch a pilot programme to accelerate IP and commercialisation across the ecosystem to help ‘breakthrough businesses’ capture the value of their IP across the business cycle. This will complement an Internationalisation programme – set out in the Business environment chapter - to support firms understand and manage investment decisions with their IP in key global markets

Retaining Oxfordshire’s talent

Finally, Oxfordshire will create a pipeline of talent for businesses looking to innovate through developing a High Flyers programme. This will support early stage post-graduates and local businesses, by placing students in firms to support innovation commercialisation. This will nurture the talent necessary to commercialise innovation in the ecosystem and develop leaders who can realise impact from R&D activity. Providing new opportunities such as this will also encourage graduates and those early in their careers to remain in Oxfordshire.

Commitments

Ambition:

To establish a globally connected innovation economy and trailblazing region in support of the 2.4% R&D target.

Actions:

To accelerate progress towards achieving this priority, Oxfordshire will:

• drive up R&D through prioritising local investment in the breakthrough technologies set out in the Science and Innovation Audit and this Local Industrial Strategy
• support the transformation of science and technology parks across the county to provide fastgrowing business the space they need, by acting as a broker and supporting organisations to access local, regional, and national funds
• examine options to double the floor space at Harwell, Culham and Begbroke science parks through accelerating a programme of local and private funding
• drive up R&D through prioritising local investment in the breakthrough technologies set out in the Science and Innovation Audit and this Local Industrial Strategy
• support local authorities, universities and developers to deliver new, well connected world-leading innovations hubs and clusters around key locations including Oxford Station and West End, Oxford Technology Centre at Kidlington, Bicester, Upper Heyford, West Oxfordshire and Grove
• help make the UK a top destination for international R&D talent and investors by:
  • setting out a distinctive brand to raise Oxfordshire’s and the Arc’s international profile for innovation and R&D
  • launching the Connecting Globally platform, an integrated digital platform across online and social media to showcase successes across the region; increase communication and knowledge exchange between firms; and to promote Oxfordshire as a major global hub for investors and innovators
  • working with the Intellectual Property Office to launch a pilot programme to accelerate IP and commercialisation across the ecosystem to help ‘breakthrough businesses’ capture the value of their IP across the business cycle.

Working with local partners across the Arc, Oxfordshire will also:

• harness the collective strength of the Arc’s research base will be essential. The new Arc Universities Group will act as the focal point from cross-Arc collaboration on science and research, identifying and delivering joint R&D projects and providing a pipeline of talent to knowledge-intensive businesses
• strengthen its ability for businesses to commercialise ideas coming out of its universities and others. Arc partners will also use assets such as Harwell, Silverstone and Cranfield to establish new networks that support the convergence of technologies across sectors and seek to develop emerging districts such as West Cambridge
• seek to grow its role as a global research and innovation hub, acting as a UK magnet for international talent, R&D, Foreign Direct Investment and research collaborations. The LEPs and MCA will work with the Department for International Trade, the Arc Universities Group and others to channel foreign investment in the assets and projects that will make the biggest impact on Arc-wide and UK growth

Government is working in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of this priority by:

• substantial on-going and capital funding to major national assets. This includes developing sites across the county:
  • investments into the Harwell Campus, including £65 million for the Faraday Institution, £99 million for the National Satellite Testing Facility, £100 million for the Rosalind Franklin research institute and £68.3 million for the Satellite Applications Catapult;
  • £86 million for the National Fusion Technology Platform at Culham Science Centre
  • City Deal and Local Growth Fund support for 4 new innovation centres: BioEscalator, Begbroke Accelerator, Remote Applications centre at Culham and the Harwell Innovation Centre
  • Supporting research and development of new transport systems and technologies across the Arc through investment by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV), UKRI, Zenzic (formerly known as Meridian Mobility) and Innovate UK
• working with the LEPs within the Arc and other local partners, including England’s Economic Heartland, to:
  • support the delivery of the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge mission and Road to Zero Strategy: utilising the considerable R&D assets within the Arc to put the UK at the forefront of the design and manufacturing of zero emission vehicles, supporting government’s commitment to end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040
  • build on the Arc’s existing role as a testbed for new transport technologies, such as automated vehicles and drones, working with government and Zenzic to access existing research and development support, and identify further opportunities to trial new mobility services within the Arc
  • support local authorities within the Arc to implement the Principles of the Future of Mobility Urban Strategy, providing guidance on design and planning to ensure new communities are designed and built to enable new approaches to mobility

People

Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy will help to develop a more responsive skills ecosystem and create better opportunities for all.

It will help underpin the county’s ambition for a global innovation ecosystem and provide the talent to capitalise on emerging industries.

Summary of ‘People’ strengths and challenges

• Oxfordshire is effectively at full employment. The employment rate is 82% - above UK and south east averages - and unemployment is 1.3%
• The workforce is also one of the most highly skilled in the country, with 51% of the working age population educated to degree level or above. The City of Oxford has one of the lowest levels of workers with no qualifications, at 3.2%, compared with a UK average of 8%. However, 22% of Oxford residents have no or low qualifications
• Although Oxfordshire’s workforce is highly skilled, there is still a shortage of school leavers with STEM skills. Between 2010-15, Oxfordshire’s annual growth in apprenticeships was 3%, below the UK average of 12.5%
• Population growth has remained largely stable over the past decade, and – according to current ONS forecasts – working age population will fall by 0.3% per year by next year. On the other hand, the over-65 population will rise by 2% per year
• Following recent growth, wages for the bottom 10% of the population are second highest in the country (after Inner London). However, social mobility rates are low, and housing affordability and quality in Oxford is driving deprivation

The Oxfordshire economy has seen high levels of employment in recent years, relative to the rest of the country. Oxfordshire has a 1.3% unemployment rate in the working age population, which is 50% lower than the UK average for the last 2 decades. At nearly full employment, this has increased pressure on businesses to be able to find, attract and retain suitably skilled workers as they grow and expand.

The workforce is one of the most highly skilled in the country, with 51% of the working age population educated to degree level or above. All districts in Oxfordshire comfortably exceeded the national average for the proportion of the population with the highest level of qualifications — NVQ4 — in 2017. The City of Oxford has one of the lowest levels of workers with no qualifications, at 3.2%, compared with a UK average of 8%, yet also contains a high proportion of the workforce with low skills and qualifications.

The region is home to 2 renowned universities and it is recognised that graduate retention and nurturing this supply of talent is key to future growth for the wider ecosystem. Across both universities the graduate retention rate is around 23% - placing the area in the mid quartile nationally, but behind other locations across the UK and internationally. Whilst access to high value employment is a key driver in retaining talent locally, proximity to London and higher salaries and the cost of housing are key challenges impacting improved graduate retention.

ONS forecasts suggest that, under the status quo scenario, Oxfordshire’s population will grow slowly over the next twenty years (from 678,000 in 2016 to 720,800 by 2036). However, this expansion is expected to be driven entirely by a rising over-65 population. The county’s 15-64 population is expected to fall by 0.3% per year for the next twenty years (compared to an England-wide growth rate of 0.1%), while the over-65 population will rise by 2% per year (compared to 1.9% per year). This is compounded by lower graduate retention rates in Oxfordshire than places like Londonor Manchester, despite high-paying firms reporting difficulty recruiting.

Inclusive growth

Oxfordshire is effective at generating good jobs. Wages for the bottom 10% are among best in country – second only to inner London by 2017. This is a relatively recent phenomenon (up from 15th of 42 counties in 2008). This headline masks significant challenges:

• Oxfordshire’s primary and secondary schools fall below the UK average on a number of measures: at A Level, Oxfordshire is below average in grades achieved, while Oxfordshire’s local authorities are also struggling on performance in indices of early years education.
• Convergence on wages has not occurred consistently across the county with South and West Oxfordshire having average salaries at around two-thirds the rate of the other 3 authorities
• Although median wages for the lowest earners in Oxfordshire are above the UK average, there are wide income disparities and pockets of deprivation. 15 of the county’s neighbourhoods are in the 20% most deprived in England, with these residents increasingly marginalised from the economy. This lack of inclusive growth in Oxfordshire is a key challenge that needs to be addressed if Oxfordshire’s future growth is to be truly inclusive.

All 5 lower tier local authorities are in the top performing half on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. However, the City of Oxford itself is in the bottom quartile for deprivation related to housing and air quality. This includes measures of affordability, overcrowding, housing quality, and homelessness.

Delivering the vision

The evidence paints a picture of a highly effective, skills-led economy in Oxfordshire. However, it is one that is at risk as the population ages, and which does not distribute opportunity equally. This Local Industrial Strategy therefore prioritises:

• getting the fundamentals right – building a skills system that better responds to local demand
• making the most of all our people – with longer and more flexible careers for older workers, and improved access to emerging jobs for younger people.

Key to this will be establishing a new Skills Advisory Panel (SAP) for Oxfordshire which will support OxLEP to fulfil its local leadership role in the skills system by helping the local area understand current and future skills needs and labour market challenges, and strengthening the link between public and private sector employers, local authorities, colleges and universities.

Oxfordshire’s Social Contract

In addition to the SAP, Oxfordshire will take forward a series of measures to support business engagement with the skills system. The SAP will provide a greater understanding of the labour market which will be used to develop our Oxfordshire’s Skills Priority Statement in early 2020, in response to the challenges identified in the SAP and LIS.

As part of the development of the Skills Priority Statement local partners will develop a Social Contract which will bring together local teachers, education professionals, the County Council and businesses. The Social Contract will go beyond simply orientating skills provision around employer demand: it will consider how to improve studentbusiness mentoring programmes; and how businesses can become more involved in local schools. Its overall objective will be to equip pupils with the skills they need to understand the emerging employment opportunities being created within Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem, the new technologies being pioneered which will transform future skills, careers and education pathways and the interrelationships and interdependencies with which businesses across the ecosystem are increasingly working.

Excellent performance in higher education is not matched at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 in Oxfordshire, and this is reflected in lower than average rates of social mobility.

Employers in Oxfordshire agree that there is a lack of STEM-related skills, and that this is a barrier to scaling up local firms.

To address these twin challenges, Oxfordshire will work with the Department for Education to champion T levels locally so that they map to our technology sectors, as part of the Oxfordshire Social Contract. The LEP will play a key role in supporting local employers to deliver T level industry placements. In addition, Oxfordshire will increase business leadership and engagement to create pathways and support social mobility for young people by working with companies across Oxfordshire to maximise the benefit of the apprenticeship levy and develop new apprenticeships in emerging technology-based opportunities.

Through the Social Contract, Oxfordshire will work with the Careers and Enterprise Company, local colleges and Oxfordshire County Council to improve social mobility for young people by ensuring they will have greater access to career pathways within Oxfordshire, to promote opportunities to access coaching and mentoring with world-leading businesses across the ecosystem. This will improve social mobility for young people who will have greater access to career pathways within Oxfordshire; it would also enable skills development to align to business need and promote more tailored skills that will release pressure on the tight labour market.

Finally, Oxfordshire will continue working with local partners to establish an Oxfordshire Entrepreneurship Hub to support students and young people across Oxfordshire to develop business propositions and develop connections across the innovation ecosystem, in close collaboration with the Said Business School. The Oxfordshire Entrepreneurship Hub will be primarily focussed on students and young people in Oxfordshire. It will provide open sessions and targeted advice to support young people to develop ideas, business propositions and entrepreneurship. It will be a place where people from across the innovation ecosystem can connect to share ideas, and where they can be directed and supported to take advantage of opportunities across the ecosystem.

Retaining and retraining older workers

To maintain and improve productivity, to reflect the pace of technological change and to continue to be a net contributor to the UK exchequer, Oxfordshire recognises the need to support people to continue to contribute to the economy into later life through longer and flexible careers.

Oxfordshire will therefore promote workplace health and well-being, continuing to develop a programme to support residents to participate in the workforce: OxLife.

This will be designed to include support for those furthest from the labour market and people with long term illness and disabilities to actively engage in the economy, building on existing community learning initiatives through working with Jobcentre Plus. It will also support retention and progression for local residents aged 50+ and armed forces personnel returning to the Oxfordshire workforce.

This will be increasingly important as technologies disrupt the labour market and changing job needs which will mean increasing the importance of re-skilling and development of new capabilities. Retraining and upskilling opportunities for Oxfordshire’s residents will support inclusive growth, enabling more people to continue to contribute to the local economy.

Delivering inclusive growth

Oxfordshire wants to better understand the impacts of how growth is currently distributed in the county and what can be done differently to ensure that, in future, those benefits are more fairly distributed. Through the Oxfordshire Growth Board, Oxfordshire will convene local leaders, academic experts, businesses and community organisations to form an Inclusive Growth Commission. This will consider how the county can ensure that the benefits of a world leading innovation ecosystem can be equitably shared and reach all communities, learning from other global ecosystems.

Commitments

Ambition:

Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy will help to develop a more responsive skills and employment ecosystem and create better opportunities for all.

Actions:

To drive progress towards achieving this priority, Oxfordshire will:

• Get the fundamentals right by developing a demand-led skills system that meets the needs of employers and breakthrough business sectors
• Take forward a series of measures to support business engagement with the skills system under the Oxfordshire Social Contract, including:
  • establishing a new Skills Advisory Panel (SAP) for Oxfordshire;
  • championing T levels locally so that they map to the county’s technology sectors and supporting local employers, to deliver industry placements
  • working with technology companies across Oxfordshire to maximise the use of apprenticeship levy to develop new apprenticeships in emerging technology-based opportunities
  • working with the Careers and Enterprise Company, local colleges and Oxfordshire County Council to improve social mobility for young people by ensuring they will have greater access to career pathways within Oxfordshire
• continuing work with local partners to establish an Oxfordshire Entrepreneurship Hub to support students and young people across the county to develop business propositions and develop connections across the innovation ecosystem

Make the most of all of our people:

• continue to develop OxLife, a targeted programme to reskill and upskill workers and armed forces personnel returning to the Oxfordshire workforce so that they can actively engage in the economy

Support Inclusive Growth:

• Oxfordshire will convene local leaders, academic experts, businesses and community organisations to form an Inclusive Growth Commission

Working with local partners across the Arc Oxfordshire will also:

• review labour market intelligence across the Arc, to gain a better understanding of how skills provision is currently delivered and funding utilised. This will include working closely with the Department for Education and providers across the= Arc to consider how local provision supports the objectives set out throughout these strategies
• work with local employers to increase apprenticeship uptake across the Arc, supporting employers to maximise their Apprenticeship Levy contributions and drive social mobility
• work with local employers to support the effective role of T levels and utilise local labour market intelligence to work with providers to consider how the local T level offer will support local businesses
• establish an Arc-wide skills marketplace, enabling the LEPs continue to build on the positive working relationships with the Careers and Enterprise Company and other careers services. This will utilise the evidence provided by each Skills Advisory Panel, connecting businesses with skills providers and people with targeted support including apprenticeships, STEM skills, T levels, technical and degree apprenticeships

Government is working in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of this priority by:

• providing £142.5 million of Local Growth Funding to support local growth in Oxfordshire, which has invested in:
  • the Advanced Engineering andTechnology Skills Centre which will supply skilled technicians at Harwell and elsewhere in Oxfordshire supported by £3.8 million Local Growth Fund investment;
  • the Livestock Innovation Centre which will focus on delivering the high-tech skills needed to meet the sustainable agriculture, food production and precision farming agenda across Oxfordshire, supported by £1.13 million Local Growth Fund investment; and
  • the Oxford Centre for Technology and Innovation which will address skills shortages across engineering, electrical, design, and emerging technologies, supported by £4.5 million Local Growth Fund investment

Infrastructure

To successfully deliver on the vision to be a world leading innovation ecosystem, Oxfordshire will continue working with government to develop a resilient and responsive physical infrastructure, connecting all communities to future economic opportunities and ensuring the benefits reach all parts of the county.

Summary of ‘Infrastructure’ strengths and challenges

The county has strong transport links along the Bristol-Birmingham-London corridors.

Oxfordshire has a higher proportion of adults (44%) participating in active travel (walking and cycling) compared with similar counties and England, as a whole.

Economic success is placing significant stress on transport and energy infrastructure. Rail demand has risen 70% in the 10 years to 2017. This is well above the UK average of 53%.

Energy capacity constraints arealready biting and will be increased by rising housing demand and pushes towards renewable energy.

Whilst 7% of premises in Oxfordshire have full fibre connectivity – which is double the national average – it remains well behind many global competitors.

Oxfordshire enjoys a central location that is well connected across the UK and internationally, with fast rail links to London, Birmingham and Bristol which provide connections to the west, the midlands and the north. Oxfordshire is close to Heathrow and Birmingham airports as well as southern ports, within an hour of international transport hubs and connections to global markets – buoyed by the success of the new Chiltern rail service to London Marylebone from Oxford and the new station at Oxford Parkway. With the development of East West Rail and the Oxford-Cambridge Expressway, there will be new and improved connections across the Arc and the Golden Triangle with Cambridge and London.

The region is working together across the public and private sector to innovate in transport and mobility, with multi-modal transport solutions and pro-public transport policies. Oxfordshire is home to companies such as the MobOx Foundation, which brings together local government, academia and industry to lead on innovation in mobility-related issues in Oxfordshire. It also has the first dedicated CAV team within any UK local authority, based at Oxfordshire County Council.

Case study: ‘PICKMEUP’ demand responsive bus service

PickMeUp is the UK’s largest intelligent demand responsive bus service and was launched in June 2018 by Oxford Bus Company. PickMeUp has shown strong growth, and by the end of its 24th week of operation had carried over 50,000 passengers, with more than 16,000 people having downloaded the app and registered an account. Factors in the Oxfordshire ecosystem that have enabled growth:

• strong public transport: The local authority has a track record of supporting public transport and effectively managing private car use in the city, back to the establishment of the UK’s first Park & Ride site in 1973. As a result, the city has a high quality bus network and a large portion of the public are open to using bus services. This has made it easier to achieve the behavioural change necessary for people to embrace this new service
• investment: Oxford Bus Company provided an investment of over £800,000 to start the service and employed 20 dedicated staff to support the operation
• strong business networks: the design of the service was informed by extensive consultation with major employers and stakeholders in the area, facilitated by OxLEP, the Chamber of Commerce and local authorities

Constraints holding Oxfordshire back

Infrastructure in Oxfordshire is under strain and the projection for the Oxfordshire economy to double in size and create 108,000 additional jobs by 2040, means infrastructure must be improved to relieve the existing pressure and accommodate future growth, while responding to increasing concerns around climate change.

Demand for rail travel has also grown rapidly, with a 70% increase in journeys to and from Oxfordshire stations in the 10 years up to 2017. The growing economy is placing significant stress on the existing infrastructure. Growth has been higher at stations other than Oxford (which rose below the UK average at 40%), suggesting rising commuter travel has been the main driver of demand growth. This is likely to continue rising, given increased levels of housing growth and planned rail investments - including Crossrail from Reading.

Moreover, given Oxfordshire’s largely rural nature, there is still heavy reliance on car travel between housing and employment locations. This contributes to severe traffic congestion on key routes, such as the A34 and the A40. The A34 is a key route to the southern ports and often becomes congested with north-south freight traffic servicing the UK. Increasingly, congestion affects workplace productivity, health and well-being, quality of life and the environment, and may deter prospective investment in the region. Lack of transport connectivity and choice in some urban and rural areas also negatively impacts access to public services, increasing inequalities in the county.

Housing is under pressure and unaffordable, due to demand from the expanding labour market. Median house prices are 50% higher in Oxfordshire than the English average, and the price to earnings ratio is one of the highest in the country at 12:1, with some parts of the county rising to 17:1. This has led to a cost of living challenge for many residents as well as pockets of deprivation across the county which is explored in more detail in the Places chapter.

Digital connectivity in Oxfordshire has significantly improved in recent years. The Better Broadband for Oxfordshire programme has enabled over 96% of premises across the county to have access to superfast broadband. However, whilst 7% of premises in Oxfordshire have full fibre connectivity – which is double the national average – it is still well behind many of the region’s global competitors.

Oxfordshire’s energy network is heavily constrained, both for additional load and for new generator connections. Future growth will be restricted unless energy infrastructure responds to changing requirements and nextgeneration needs of energy-intensive science and technology assets.

To meet the scale of demand, Oxfordshire will look into multiple energy sources and new service models. The region will also encourage innovation in low carbon solutions and ways to reduce demand – currently only 10% of Oxfordshire’s energy is from renewable sources in comparison to 25% for the UK average. The Garden Town developments at Didcot and Bicester, and the emerging Oxfordshire Cotswold Garden Village, provide the opportunity to develop new and innovative energy solutions to begin addressing these challenges.

Delivering the vision

This foundation, therefore, focuses on developing the critical physical infrastructure that underpins the ecosystem. This will increase connectivity, mobility and competitiveness both within Oxfordshire and out to the rest of the UK, and to gateways to the world. To do this, Oxfordshire will identify opportunities to implement the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy, the Oxfordshire Energy Strategy, and develop an ambitious Digital Investment Plan which is genuinely world-leading and rivals other global innovation ecosystems. This will highlight opportunities to provide high quality connectivity across the ecosystem and meet the additional capacity requirements of economic growth. Better infrastructure will improve Oxfordshire’s quality of life for residents and its attractiveness as a location, to attract top talent and encourage talent to stay.

Complementing the projects set out in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc chapter, Oxfordshire will take forward existing plans including:

• Digital Investment Plan: Oxfordshire will work with regional partners to develop an ambitious Digital Investment Plan to scope locally led options to accelerate the roll out of full gigabit fibre to premises and public assets, 5G and next generation telecommunications across the innovation ecosystem to provide worldleading digital coverage in urban and rural areas, with government taking a challenge and advisory role on this work. The Digital Investment Plan will work across planning authorities to have a formal, standardised approach to the use of public sector assets for deploying digital infrastructure in order to combine with street furniture investment to support the roll out of Internet of Things and 5G networks and provide high quality connectivity across the county. It will provide the digital foundation to support the Living Lab approach and deliver an uplift in services to communities. Improving Oxfordshire’s digital infrastructure is critical to enable connectivity between sites whilst preserving the natural environment, ensuring residents in Oxfordshire benefit from greater connectivity and digital technological advancements and that Oxfordshire remains competitive with respect to other world-wide innovation ecosystems
• The Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy: Oxfordshire will work with local and national partners to identify opportunities to progress its infrastructure ambitions as set out in the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OxIS). The OxIS identifies, maps and prioritises Oxfordshire’s strategic infrastructure ambitions up to 2040, bringing together all the strategic infrastructure that supports local plans. These ambitions include road, rail and bus rapid improvements for sustainable, multi-modal transport, along with new stations and Park and Ride hubs which would better connect the ecosystem, supporting business growth, innovation and commercialisation including:
  • plans for the development of the Oxford Station National Rail Hub (new track, platform and station capacity) to realise its strategic potential with critical connections throughout the UK, Arc wide under East-West Rail and through enhanced countywide services and stations connecting housing sites, science and technology parks with a worldclass gateway to the proposed Global Business District
  • growth of the Didcot and Bicester Garden Towns, Oxfordshire Cotswold Garden Village and expansion of science parks. This would address the critical connectivity issues that are hindering growth of the ecosystem and release the pressure on existing infrastructure that is causing congestion, pollution and extensive commuting times
• Government and Oxfordshire are already progressing this, including through the recently announced £218 million support from the Housing Infrastructure Fund for Didcot Garden Town, enabling growth at Culham, Harwell and Milton Park.
• Oxfordshire Energy Strategy: As outlined in the Oxfordshire Energy Strategy, local partners will seek to deliver a new market place that connects the grid, suppliers and consumers. The Energy Strategy will commit to a 50% reduction of CO2 Emissions by 2030 compared to 2008, with the ambitions to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In addition to this, it aims to roll out the UK’s first ‘Zero Emission Zone’, in Oxford City Centre from 2020. This will provide a strategy that will seek to secure investment to meet the additional capacity requirements of economic growth, innovate in low carbon energy products and services and seek ways to reduce energy demand, both in new and existing communities where novel solutions can be applied. In support of this, UKRI has announced £60 million of funding for 2 energy systems demonstrator projects in Oxfordshire

Commitments

Ambition:

To successfully deliver on the vision to be a world-leading innovation ecosystem, Oxfordshire aims to relieve the pressure on its infrastructure and connect all communities to future economic activity.

Actions:

To drive progress towards achieving this priority, Oxfordshire will:

• Work with regional partners to develop an ambitious Digital Investment Plan to scope locally led options to accelerate the roll out of full gigabit fibre to premises, 5G and next-generation telecommunications, with government taking a challenge and advisory role on this work
• Work with local and national partners to identify opportunities to progress its ambitions in the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OxIS), which identifies, maps and prioritises the county’s strategic infrastructure requirements up to 2040.
• Work with local and national partners to realise the ambitions set out in the Oxfordshire Energy Strategy using local funding streams, which will put in place a low carbon energy grid to support growth and lead the development of new models for energy management.
• Encourage innovation in low carbon solutions and ways to reduce demand. The Garden Town developments at Didcot and Bicester, and the emerging Oxfordshire Cotswold Garden Village provide the opportunity to develop new and innovative energy solutions to begin addressing these challenges.

Working with local partners across the Arc Oxfordshire will also:

• collaborate with Department for Transport, Highways England, East West Rail Company and England’s Economic Heartland to expand the economic benefits of planned strategic transport links and improvements to the Major Roads network across the Arc and develop the first-mile-last-mile connections across the Arc
• work with government to develop a shared evidence base for the current and future energy needs of the Arc, including through the identification of opportunities to test new energy policies or approaches within the Arc
• work with government to identify and diffuse best practice on digital infrastructure planning in the Arc and explore opportunities to align new transport infrastructure with digital infrastructure in the Arc. This will aim to support industry to accelerate the roll-out of full fibre networks, enabling accelerated growth of 5G technologies across the Arc
• work to standardise public data where possible, and with support from government policy experts, to ensure that the opportunities to collect and capitalise on data are utilised – with a view to addressing Grand Challenges around the future of mobility, the ageing society, and clean growth
• work with government across the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc to explore proposals for new approaches to funding infrastructure, as set out in Government’s response to National Infrastructure Commission Report at Autumn Statement 2018

Government is working in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of this priority by:

• investing in significant new transport infrastructure through East West Rail and the Expressway, and first-mile-last-mile connectivity, as detailed in the Joint Statement on the Arc published at Spring Statement 2019
• investing £200 million of funding through Oxfordshire’s Growth and City Deals, supporting a wide range of road and public transport schemes, as well as design and testing facilities for new transport technology and broadband funding
• investing in the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, committing to deliver up to 100,000 homes by 2031, with up to £215 million of investment. This includes £60 million for affordable houses and £150 million over 5 years for infrastructure – and builds on £340 million of housing and infrastructure funding committed by Oxfordshire councils over the period
• funding Oxfordshire to develop its local energy strategy and supporting implementation via the South East Energy Hub
• working, through Network Rail, with Oxford City Council, Oxfordshire County Council, OxLEP and local developers, to take forward the Oxfordshire Rail Study

Business environment

Oxfordshire: a powerhouse for commercialising transformative technologies.

Central to this Local Industrial Strategy is creating the right business environment to support a world-leading innovation ecosystem. Oxfordshire has great businesses and is one of the strongest engines for growth in the UK, but it does have scope tonbe even more productive by driving productivity gains in businesses across a number of sectors. This indicates the region could be better translating ideas into tangible business growth and support other parts of the UK.

Summary of ‘Business environment’ strengths and challenges

• Stochastic Frontier Analysis can be used to assess the economic efficiency of businesses in Oxfordshire relative to the rest of the UK. The Analysis forms part of the Economic Baseline Review and suggests Oxfordshire has higher than- usual volumes of both highly efficient and highly inefficient firms
• The region is showing net business growth and rising business density, and there are clearly successful scale-ups – with 5 ‘unicorns’ spun out of the university in recent years
• The Scale Up Institute’s latest figures show Oxfordshire as having the fastest growth in scale-up firms in the UK
• In 2015, 69% of firms said skills gaps were inhibiting growth – but growth has accelerated markedly since then, in spite of this
• The region has a strong financial support offer, with OSI (Oxford Sciences Innovation) raising over £600 million in private equity to fund spin-outs

Through this Local Industrial Strategy, Oxfordshire aims to enable businesses to capture new growth and export opportunities that result from commercialisation, and thus increase productivity. It will support businesses to grow to scale more quickly and enable the creation of more unicorn businesses in Oxfordshire.

Oxfordshire’s business models

In the Building a Global Innovation Ecosystem section above, we introduced the distinction between ‘cornerstone businesses’ and ‘breakthrough businesses.

Cornerstone businesses are the backbone of the economy and provide the platform for economic growth. Their performance is closely linked to the performance of the economy as a whole, as they tend to be in mature sectors, including education, health, professional services, transport, logistics, retail, leisure and tourism. Nearly all of Oxfordshire’s businesses are more productive than their UK counterparts. Cornerstone business sectors are also steadily growing, with 2.4% year-on-year growth in the number of businesses operating within them. Oxfordshire’s strong base of cornerstone businesses is essential to future growth. They are the sectors which have contributed to historical growth in Oxfordshire – for example, contributing to over 50,000 new jobs created since 2011/12 – and they underpin and support Oxfordshire’s strong economy.

Breakthrough businesses tend to rely on innovation and transformative technologies. These technologies, and the innovation spurred by the convergence of technologies across industries, have the potential to drive economic growth at scale and will increasingly drive productivity across all sectors. These businesses tend to be riskier but have the potential for accelerated growth, becoming ‘gazelles’ (businesses that grow by 20% for a period of 4 years consecutively) or ‘unicorns’ (businesses with a market value of over US$1billionn).

Oxfordshire is known in the UK for its high concentration of breakthrough businesses. These companies are growing rapidly, with 9% year-on-year growth in the number of businesses. The region benefits from high levels of R&D investment, and a large number of start-ups and spin outs. Several of these spin-outs have grown into unicorn businesses, with market values of more than US$1billion. The City of Oxford ranks in the top 10 cities nationwide for number of patent applications per resident, according to Centre for Cities in 2018, and the University of Oxford continues to generate more spinouts than any other university in the UK. Oxfordshire aims to help more of its businesses to grow to scale.

Moreover, Oxfordshire has a higher concentration of businesses in transformative technologies than in the rest of the UK. Approximately 7% of jobs in Oxfordshire were located in the 4 science and technology sectors as identified in the Science and Innovation Audit (SIA), compared with 4% in the UK. The markets for transformative technologies are rapidly growing, and Oxfordshire is well-placed to tap into this potential for growth. The SIA suggested that, by 2030, transformative technologies could contribute 800,000 jobs to the UK economy, 8% of which could be in Oxfordshire.

Figure 8: Cornerstone v Breakthrough Businesses

Cornerstone

2.4% growth year-on-year in the number of businesses

Cornerstone businesses support breakthrough businesses, providing them with essential services and supply chains.

Breakthrough

9% growth year-on-year in the number of businesses

Breakthrough businesses stimulate growth throughout the economy and can transform cornerstone business models through sharing innovation and technology that can improve productivity.

However, Oxfordshire also has challenges to address, to ensure the region can maximise its potential to commercialise and innovate transformative technologies.

There is room for productivity to increase. Whilst the region’s GVA per hour is above average for England, in recent years it has fallen below the south east. This is driven by a high number of hours worked on average in Oxfordshire, so although net GVA is high, productivity per hour is lower. The Economic Baseline Review also shows that Oxfordshire firms are quite polarised in their productivity. There are larger than expected numbers of low productivity and highly efficient and productive businesses when compared with the UK as a whole. Oxfordshire aims to provide the best conditions possible for high-potential businesses to grow, while supporting low-productivity business to bridge this productivity gap.

Access to premises

Recent analysis by Bidwells highlights that Oxfordshire’s critical hubs are struggling to respond to demand for new premises, leading to record rental costs. Despite plans to expand, it is uncertain whether the development of new facilities will meet the scale of the ecosystem’s need, which will have a major impact on its ability to increase investment in R&D activity overall. In particular, Oxfordshire lacks flexible laboratory and innovation space as well as Grade A office space, which are critical to attracting foreign direct investment and secure international business headquarters in the region.

Access to finance

There remains a complex and confusing finance market with continued challenges for high growth potential businesses being able to secure longterm patient capital – particularly at early stage investment points in the business lifecycle. Furthermore, the nascent technologies which the Oxfordshire ecosystem is pioneering are cutting edge. There is a particular lack of long-term patient capital available to firms to develop to scale and grow and enable ideas and innovations to develop as new products and services. Both Oxford University Innovation (OUI) and the Oxford Investment Opportunity Network have identified the continued gap in early stage investment and seed capital within the ecosystem and its lack of capacity when compared to other global ecosystems.

Oxfordshire’s future success will require a more coherent and longterm financing landscape, with a range of finance options for high-potential businesses at different stages of their growth cycle. Local partners are committed to undertaking further analysis of the financial marketplace to further understand the key factors affecting the ecosystem in order to put in place solutions which can enable greater access to flows of business finance.

Transformative technologies are, by their nature, evolving and nascent: businesses within the ecosystem have expressed the need to de-risk investment opportunities in these high risk, high-value markets to make them more attractive for firms to attract and accelerate investment in R&D activity. In order to achieve the step change proposed by the government’s 2.4% R&D investment target, measures need to be put in place which factor in the overall risk level involved for firms and offers a better calibration of the long term trajectory of product development and testing which can be put in place to incentivise business investment alongside UKRI funds.

Foreign Direct Investment

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has grown steadily over recent years. 2017/18 saw a record 98 new investors landed primarily due to the opening of the £440 million Westgate Shopping Centre and expansion at Bicester Village. Notwithstanding expansion in the visitor economy Oxfordshire’s core FDI strengths lie in life sciences, space and satellite and advanced manufacturing which collectively account for the majority of recent investments. The chart below shows Oxfordshire’s growth in FDI over a 7 year timeline.

Delivering the vision

Partners across Oxfordshire will work together to create the best conditions possible for the next generation of high-growth firms: the best place in the UK for businesses and sectors that do not exist yet. This Local Industrial Strategy prioritises:

• bringing even more high-potential firms into Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem
• attracting further market investment into infrastructure and businesses, to ensure Oxfordshire businesses grow with the grain of the market

The Growth Hub

To bring high growth firms in to the innovation system, Oxfordshire will enhance the offer of the Growth Hub through ESIF investment, to enable it to deliver more support for businesses. The Growth Hub remit will expand to deliver more targeted support and advice to different types of businesses: from high-growth and high-potential firms to those with lower levels of productivity but substantial potential to improve. Working alongside partners Oxfordshire will develop improved, joined-up business support, including:

• establishing a Scale-Up Programme, to support breakthrough businesses to grow to scale faster. It will draw on successful global models to support innovators to transition from idea-creation to accessing funding and beginning to prototype and commercialise technology and innovation. This will also provide leadership and management training
• providing support to firms seeking to increase their productivity by adopting innovative business models and accessing management skills. This will focus on helping firms reach the prototyping and commercialising stage more quickly to capture value from innovation and ideation. It will be based on mentoring rather than training, building on successful university-based models such as the Creative Destruction Labs in Toronto. Where relevant, this will draw on insights from existing networks and mentoring schemes run by Be the Business and others.

Figure 9: Total Reported FDI Successes in Oxfordshire

View a larger version of figure 9

Access to finance

To boost financial support for highgrowth businesses, working with partners in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, Oxfordshire will establish an Oxfordshire Finance Hub to support access to finance by providing advice and support in commerciality, business planning, Intellectual Property (IP) adoption and investment. The Oxfordshire Finance Hub will work closely with the Oxfordshire Growth Hub to provide finance advice and support to both breakthrough and cornerstone businesses. This will enable businesses to receive the support they need to accelerate IP adoption and investment in research and development.

Internationalisation

Oxfordshire will continue to strengthen its role as a destination for international trade and investment. Working with the Department for International Trade, Oxfordshire’s Internationalisation Delivery Plan will be included as a chapter of the wider Arc Internationalisation Plan to maximise investment and trade opportunities, linked to key sectors and global locations.

Working with our partners in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, Oxfordshire will develop a proposition to establish an investment case to attract Wealth Fund investment, complementing other UK funds, dedicated to improving infrastructure across the Oxfordshire innovation ecosystem.

This will help institutional investors to identify propositions with low risk, fast return and potential for global recognition. Oxfordshire will seek to prove that market funding can be effectively utilised to develop infrastructure solutions.

Business space

Oxfordshire will also support business growth through addressing the lack of business and innovation space. It will look to leverage planned developments which can offer the potential for creating a major business district of scale, as a new commercial hub. This will aim to meet the demand and interest of Fortune 500 and NASDAQ company R&D HQs to locate in the region.

Commitments

Ambition:

Oxfordshire as a powerhouse for commercialising transformative technologies.

Actions:

To drive progress towards achieving this priority, Oxfordshire will:

• work alongside partners in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc as part of the wider drive to develop improved, joined-up business support, including:
  • establishing a Scale-Up Programme to support breakthrough businesses to grow to scale faster
  • providing support to firms seeking to improve their productivity by adopting innovative business models and accessing management skills
• establish an Oxfordshire Finance Hub to support access to finance by providing advice and support in commerciality, business planning, IP adoption and investment, which will work closely with the Growth Hub
• Oxfordshire will diversify its investment strategy to attract the private investment to support the delivery the infrastructure identified in the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy and other enablers required for economic growth (including key technologies and innovation). This will provide the investment and funding necessary for infrastructure improvements and expanded business support for start-ups and scaling businesses
• support business growth through addressing the lack of business and innovation space, looking to leverage planned developments which can offer the potential for creating a major business district of scale as a new commercial hub
• establish an investment case to attract institutional investors complementing other UK funds, dedicated to improving infrastructure across the Oxfordshire innovation ecosystem and the Arc

Working with local partners across the Arc Oxfordshire will also:

• work with government, within existing budgets, to develop improved, joined-up business support for high-growth firms across the Arc, developing an Arc-wide offer to different kinds of business
• work with the British Business Bank to help SMEs in the Arc to access the finance they need to grow their businesses. Local partners across the Arc will also explore the existing landscape and any gaps in finance for businesses, as well as the establishment of an Arc-wide business angel network to better engage with early-stage investors
• work with government to develop a shared understanding of market failures in creating new commercial premises within the Arc, bringing together a range of analysis already being undertaken locally, regionally, and nationally
• work with the Department for International Trade to encourage greater trade and inward investment, building on existing engagement at LEP level and including the development of an Oxford-Cambridge Arc Internationalisation Delivery Plan

Government is working in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of this priority by:

• providing £142.5 million of Local Growth Funding to support local growth in Oxfordshire, which has invested in:
  • Centre for Applied Superconductivity - a new centre of innovation on the Harwell Campus and at the Culham Centre for Fusion Research Campus, supported by £4.5 million Local Growth Fund investment; and
  • Disruptive Innovation for Space Centre which will provide access to equipment and expertise to help UK companies innovate and accelerate the development of new products and services, supported by £3 million Local Growth Fund investment.
• continuing to support the Oxfordshire Growth Hub to provide high quality business support across the county
• supporting the development of 2 Enterprise Zones at Didcot and Science Vale

Places

The previous chapters, above, set out how the foundations of productivity will support businesses, universities, schools, colleges, research institutes and local authorities work to make Oxfordshire one of the world’s best places to build an innovative business.

This final foundation illustrates how this will play out across the county.

As agreed as part of the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal with government, the 6 Oxfordshire local authorities – Cherwell District Council, Oxford City Council, Oxfordshire County Council, South Oxfordshire District Council, Vale of White Horse District Council and West Oxfordshire District Council - have committed to producing a joint statutory spatial plan, known as the Oxfordshire Plan 2050.

This will provide an integrated strategic planning framework and evidence base to support sustainable growth across the county to 2050, including the planned delivery of new homes and economic development, and the anticipated supporting infrastructure needed.

Underpinning this spatial vision is:

• a polycentric network of innovation clusters: creating workplace and housing communities across the county which are innovative-by-design
• providing the enabling multi-level physical and digital connectivity that uses sustainable, multi-modal transport - within Oxfordshire connecting housing and growth locations; across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc by rail and road; and to the rest of the UK and beyond.

Figure 10 identifies key assets in the Innovation Ecosystem underpinning this Local Industrial Strategy in more detail, comprising the 3 stages of Oxfordshire’s business lifecycle (Ideation, Innovation, Commercialisation) set out in the Ideas chapter.

Although different areas are capable of undertaking all stages of the business lifecycle, some will be more suited than others. The map shows a concentration of innovation from Begbroke to Harwell and Culham, distributing out from this central area to the rest of the ecosystem. It also shows an expansion of commercial activity across the region that can create employment and business growth where land is less constrained, rippling out across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc and the rest of the UK. This solution seeks to retain the natural landscape and living experience as a major Oxfordshire asset.

Ultimately, businesses will seek to locate near each other and where they feel they can best capture supply chain and agglomeration benefits.

Summary of ‘Places’ strengths and challenges

• Housing costs are around 50% above the English median in 4 of Oxfordshire’s 5 authorities. Affordability (the ratio of wages to housing) is higher than the south east average – despite relatively higher wages
• Affordability has deteriorated with the ratio, on average, of 12:1, and rising to 17:1 in some parts of the county - the highest in the country
• Output per head varies significantly across the county, with averages being highest in Oxford at £41,000, and lowest in West Oxfordshire at £27,000 – West Oxfordshire has the highest employment rate, at nearly 84%
• The county can be split between ‘out-commuter’ districts with relatively low paying in-district jobs, and ‘in-commuter’ districts facing high-value labour shortages

Figure 10: Key locations within the innovation ecosystem

View a larger version of figure 10

1. Oxpens, West End & Station Quarter
2. Osney Meads Innovation Quarter
3. Oxford University
4. Oxford Centre for Innovation
5. Oxford Brookes University
6. Headington Hospital Quarter
7. Oxford Business Park
8. Oxford Science Park
9. Quadrant, Abingdon Science Park
10. Culham Science Park
11. Milton Park
12. Didcot Garden Town
13. Harwell Science and Innovation Campus
14. Grove Technology Park
15. Defence Academy, Shrivenham
16. Howbery Business Park
17. Oxford North
18. Begbroke Science Park and Innovation Centre
19. Oxford Technology Park
20. Oxfordshire Cotswold Garden Village
21. Witney Business & Innovation Centre
22. Careton & RAF Brize Norton
23. Bicester Garden Town
24. Heyford Park
25. Banbury

Oxfordshire’s communities

Oxfordshire already provides a high quality of life and healthy communities. Towns and villages across Oxfordshire are vibrant and distinctive, and Oxford is the highest ranking city in PwC’s 2018 Good Growth for Cities Index, which measures cities in the UK against a range of indicators for economic success and wellbeing.

Oxfordshire’s natural capital and cultural and heritage assets are uniquely rich and diverse, including 3 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 7 Special Areas of Conservation, rivers and the canal, parks and other green spaces, as well as a range of worldclass museums and libraries. These are important parts of what makes Oxfordshire a place where people want to live and businesses want to locate.

Oxfordshire is a global destination with international reach. It is increasingly attractive to visitors across new markets, attracted to Oxfordshire by its considerable tourist offer including the City of Oxford, Bicester Village, the Cotswolds and Blenheim Palace. In 2017, the county welcomed nearly 30 million visitors, with many of these from international locations. The tourism and hospitality industry supports 10% of all employment in Oxfordshire, contributing £2.17 billion to the economy. Increased investment in areas such as high grade hotel stock and international conferencing facilities could boost this offer, complement Oxfordshire’s global brand, and create more accessible, permanent jobs for the wider community

However, as Oxfordshire becomes an increasingly attractive place to live, work and visit, it has developed a number of challenges that are now restricting economic growth. The urban area of Oxford is contained within a tightly drawn Green Belt that prevents significant expansion around the city and limits housing supply. Flooding and other environmental issues limit the options for growth beyond existingboundaries. Local towns are able to ease housing pressure for the city but there are challenges in connecting these hubs to core economic activity located elsewhere in the country. A strategic approach to long-term planning is needed across Oxfordshire to coordinate housing growth and infrastructure investment – as set out in the Housing and Growth Deal.

This constrained housing supply is making Oxfordshire increasingly unaffordable, increasing the price of housing to buy and rent. The 2017 median house price in Oxfordshire is now 50% higher than the English average. Oxfordshire also has a housing to income ratio of 12:1, which rises to 17:1 in some parts of the county. This has created a cost of living challenge for many residents, affecting the City of Oxford especially in the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

This is exacerbating the inequality within Oxfordshire, making the region less attractive to global top talent, and less able to retain recent graduates from our universities and provide affordable housing for key lower and middle-income workers upon which the economy depends. This lack of ability to attract and retain talent can also hinder business growth and restrict investment into the region.

Delivering the Vision Ambitions for growth in the area mean that Oxfordshire can go further, pioneering new communities that integrate cutting-edge technologies into sustainable and attractive surroundings.

Working between local authorities, public service providers and private developers gives the region the opportunity to design a globally recognised sustainable, high quality, liveable place utilising new technologies and services developed in Oxfordshire. These will be designed in partnership with businesses and communities to tackle the 4 Grand Challenges set out in the Industrial Strategy.

To achieve this, Oxfordshire will work with industry partners to develop pioneer communities that act as living labs, preparing communities for technological and environmental change including the advent of connected and autonomous travel, all electric energy, smart homes and sustainable living.

These living labs, as illustrated below and in figure 11, will provide a platform for the region’s world-leading science and technology clusters to work with local communities to see how their products work in practice and deliver new innovations in place shaping and sustainable communities.

Living Lab Building Blocks in Oxfordshire

The key building blocks for world leading Living Labs already exist in Oxfordshire with partners collaborating across local authorities, universities and local businesses, to deliver innovative projects that demonstrate the Living Lab concept. For example:

• A community of senior leaders across industry, academia and local public services who are recognised as market leaders in complementary disciplines, united by the opportunity that Living Labs present for the UK both to resolve national challenges and generate knowledge to build export markets
• Pro-active community engagement enabling individuals to participate and feedback at all levels enabling local communities across the County to be part of the solution process
• Fundamental and translational research taking place at the University’s Hospitals and Science Parks underpinning the national effort across science and engineering in academia and industry. 20% of the programmes at the Diamond and ISIS accelerator facilities focus on energy R&D and UKAEA on long term energy solutions with its present focus on fusion and robotics
• Accelerated product development for local companies in the Oxford, Harwell, Milton and Culham Science Parks across critical sectors, together with strategic partnerships with major companies including Siemens, Bosch, EDF Energy, Immunocore and BMW.
• The presence of futureready innovation test beds pioneering and accelerating the creation of new solutions
• Significant opportunities to accelerate public – private investment in R&D, supporting wider UK ambitions to increase R&D to 2.4% of national GDP
• Complementary infrastructure development through the Oxfordshire Housing & Growth Deal, integrated with the emerging transport strategy being developed by England’s Economic Heartland and the spatial vision emerging for the Arc.

Each living lab will bring together multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams and supply chains to collaborate to explore opportunities for:

• co-creation of solutions by bringing together technology push and marketpull factors across a diverse range of viewpoints, constraints and knowledge levels to sustain the exploration of new scenarios, concepts, related potential products/services, business models and solutions
• exploration by engaging all stakeholders, especially user communities, at an earlier stage of the co-creation process to discover emerging scenarios, usages, commercial models and behaviours through live scenarios in real or virtual environments
• experimentation that implements appropriate technological artefacts in vivo to benchmark live scenarios involving large number of users whilst, in parallel, collecting data for analysis
• evaluation that assesses innovative concepts as well as related technological artefacts in real-life situations through various dimensions such as socio-ergonomic, sociocognitive and socio-economic aspects. It is the observation of what happens when technology confronts user value models that roots a Living Lab in real feedback rather than experimental learning.

Oxfordshire will work in the short-term to establish:

• A Data and Mobility Living Lab, including (but not limited to) at Culham Smart Village, West Oxfordshire, Oxford City and Didcot Garden Town. These will explore new solutions and technologies, such as autonomous vehicles and smart infrastructure to support improved connectivity and mobility across the ecosystem. They will explore the use of integrated transport services that reduce reliance on private vehicles, while promoting independent living and reducing congestion
• A Clean Growth Living Lab, working with Oxford-Cambridge Arc partners at sites including Harwell, Bicester Garden Town and Culham Smart Village to pioneer new forms of locally generated low carbon energy technologies and solutions. Oxfordshire will work with partners to develop, evaluate and pilot innovative low-carbon energy technologies and solutions for new housing settlements and business locations including the development of off-grid and new fuel services. These labs will support Oxfordshire’s commitment to a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2008, and its wider vision for net zero emissions by 2050
• A Health and Wellbeing Living Lab, linked to the Global Health and Life Sciences Quarter. This will provide pioneering resources and innovation, and support other life sciences hubs across the ecosystem, including Milton Park and Harwell, into health services within existing communities and the new Garden Towns, Garden Village and other settlements with a focus on delivering improved outcomes arising from an ageing society

Harnessing Healthy Place Shaping

There is growing evidence that significant benefits for local people can be achieved through bringing together planning for housing, infrastructure and the economy with planning for residents’ health and wellbeing. Integrating health and wellbeing into the growth agenda across Oxfordshire seeks to simultaneously improve productivity and workforce productivity and deliver better longer-term outcomes for people.

Local partners will work collaboratively with local healthcare providers to integrate the concept of Healthy Place Shaping into the Living Lab approach.

Case study: Bicester Healthy New Town

The Healthy New Town Programme at Bicester is a place-based prevention programme, using the opportunities presented by population growth to test innovations in the built environment, new models of care, and community activation to improve health and wellbeing. The aim is that Bicester becomes a place where healthy behaviour is easy, fun and affordable - where being active, eating healthy food, and being a good neighbour are part of normal daily life.

The programme has adopted a systems-based approach to delivering change, working closely with a wide range of partners including schools, businesses, health and care providers, the voluntary sector, housing developers and academic partners, with Cherwell District Council acting as the lead organisation.

The programme aims to improve both the physical and mental health of everyone in Bicester – the existing community as well as those moving to the town – by enabling residents to adopt healthy behaviours.

Businesses have been actively engaged in promoting healthy workplaces, introducing evidencebased workplace interventions aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of employees. Tailored guidance has been offered to businesses on how best to support employees to improve health and ultimately improve productivity. Good local work opportunities that enable residents to choose active travel and to work in healthy workplaces are supporting the development of Bicester as a thriving community – a place where people want to live and work.

Figure 11: Living Lab ‘Life Cycle’

Oxfordshire as a living laboratory:

• we will co-create solutions through public-private-people partnerships, working closely with universities, investors, developers and local communities
• solutions will be people-focused and integrated into communities to enhance quality of life and liveability. People will be at the centre of the design and testing process
• the living lab will demonstrate proof of concept and scalability of solutions to governments, industry and investors, which will benefit the wider UK market
• new products, services and solutions will be safely developed and tested at speed in real-world environments, by real people using data driven evaluation
• multidisciplinary collaboration will bring together areas of specialism, including technological innovation, social science, policy, planning and data science
• we will explore technology-enabled solutions to the UK’s Grand Challenges, exploring the convergences between technologies to create new products and services

Case study: Culham Future Development

The announcement of the new Thames River crossing between Didcot and Culham is a significant investment in South Oxfordshire that is designed to relieve the A34 west of Abingdon and Oxford; link the major centres of high tech employment growth at Harwell, Milton Park and Culham; relieve local congestion south of Abingdon; enable housing development at Didcot and Culham; crystallise the western end of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc and, in time, connect seamlessly to CrossRail, Heathrow and the City of London.

This investment in infrastructure also underpins 2 globally attractive Living Lab opportunities. The first builds on the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) work being conducted around Oxford and centred on the UKAEA’s RACE facility at Culham. Oxfordshire proposes establishing a CAV service between Culham and Harwell via Culham Railway Station, Didcot Parkway and Milton Park. In parallel with using existing rural roads, this CAV service would also use the new road and bridge. New CAV Test Bed facilities at RACE provide an ideal location for the ‘CAV Depot’ along with the multi-disciplinary teams who would want to develop the service exploring all aspects from user requirements and real use, experience and pricing; insurance and regulation; integration of many stakeholders including technology developers, councils and highways agencies, local employers and investors.

Furthermore the 3,500 new housing settlement identified in the South Oxfordshire Local Plan adjacent to Culham Railway Station would be well served by the new road and also the Didcot-Oxford mainline railway and the underutilised Culham Railway Station. This new settlement, which for now is being called Culham Science Village, provides a rare opportunity to explore digital-enabled living by building an inclusive all age connected-community; shared mobility ownership and first-mile-last-mile intermodal transport; integrated data services including a community data trust; drone and autonomous vehicle delivery services linking local retail and community facilities with larger hubs in Oxford and Didcot/Reading; digital health/GP services; integrated education with the adjacent European School; off grid energy, water, recycling and sewerage. These Living Labs will leverage the Housing Infrastructure Fund investment by resolving local congestion issues, building high-need housing as well as attracting multi-national attention and investment. Companies including Siemens, EDF, Bosch, Williams, Oxbotica, Arrival, Amey, Telefonica, Nominet would join UKAEA, University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University in creating a world-class cluster building on the huge depth of scientific capability and capacity.

Commitments

Ambition:

Capitalising on innovation and infrastructure investments, Oxfordshire will become a ‘polycentric network of innovation clusters’. This will be based on exemplar new housing communities, linked to innovation parks and assets throughout the county and country.

Actions:

To drive progress towards achieving this priority, Oxfordshire will:

• work with industry partners to develop pioneer communities that act as living labs, preparing communities for technological and environmental change including the advent of connected and autonomous travel, all electric energy, smart homes and sustainable living. This will include:
  • a Data and Mobility Living Lab, including Culham Smart Village, West Oxfordshire, Oxford City and Didcot Garden Town
  • a Clean Growth Living Lab, including Harwell, Bicester Garden Town and Culham Smart Village
  • a Health and Wellbeing Living Lab, linked to the Global Health and Life Sciences Quarter
• Work with local healthcare providers to adopt the principles of Healthy Place Shaping as part of the development of Living Labs across Oxfordshire

Working with local partners across the Arc Oxfordshire will also:

• consider ways to contribute towards the government’s Clean Growth Grand Challenge mission to at least halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030, supporting the Arc’s wider ambition to create clean, energy efficient and sustainable communities for all
• ensure that the environment in the Arc is left in a better state for future generations:
  • embodying England’s 25 Year Environment Plan which sets out our comprehensive approach to improving landscapes and habitats, and the aspiration to move to a policy of net environmental gain in future
  • engaging with government to co-design a local natural capital planning approach for the Arc, ensuring that the wider work on productivity is aligned
  • using intelligent and sensitive design in new housing and infrastructure developments
  • considering ways to maximise environmental expertise across the Arc and to empower the business community to champion and support the Arc’s natural assets

Government is working in partnership with Oxfordshire to support the delivery of this priority by:

• investing in the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, committing to deliver up to 100,000 homes by 2031, with up to £215 million of investment, including £60 million for affordable houses and £150 million over 5 years for infrastructure
• investing £218 million of Housing Infrastructure Fund in Didcot Garden Town, to support up to 13,411 new homes, alongside over £500 million of further investment from Homes England since 2010
• providing £142.5 million of Local Growth Funding to support local growth in Oxfordshire, which has invested in, for example, Oxford North, a package to improve transport in the north of the city and enable the Oxford North development which will provide business and research space and new homes, with £5.9 million Local Growth Funding
• recognising significant natural capital assets across the county, including 3 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 7 Special Areas of Conversations, worldclass museums and libraries

Priorities across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc

This Local Industrial Strategy has started to set out how shared priorities for Oxfordshire fit with a wider range of activity being taken forward locally, regionally and nationally.

The Oxford-Cambridge Arc cuts across boundaries and affects each of the 4 areas in the Arc in similar ways. These offer government and local partners the opportunity to act at scale with a consistent approach across the Arc and, as with the preceding local priorities, they can be structured around the foundations of productivity.

• Ideas – innovation, including the Future of Mobility
• People – skills
• Infrastructure - energy and digital
• Business environment
• Places – including environment

Local partners will work together collaboratively across all of these Foundations to ensure that the implementation of the 4 Local Industrial Strategies maximises the economic potential of the wider Arc region as a whole.

Ideas

The Arc has unrivalled science and technology capabilities – from the renowned research centres in Oxford and Cambridge, to their surrounding technology campuses such as Harwell, and commercial testbeds in the ‘Connected Core’ of the Arc. Bringing these many assets together at scale would create a driver of growth and innovation for the UK.

However, the Arc is not yet a single innovation ecosystem and has potential to drive greater economic growth and productivity: more can be done to connect its numerous assets in a manner which demonstrably adds value. Achieving this will involve both building existing strengths such as life sciences and providing the best environment possible for the emergence of disruptive technologies. The prize is higher R&D investment in support of the Industrial Strategy’s 2.4% R&D target, UK leadership in transformative technologies, and a continued post-Brexit future as a global centre for science, research and innovation.

In order to achieve this, Arc partners will work with government, UK Research and Innovation and others on the following priorities:

• harnessing the collective strength of the Arc’s research base will be essential. The new Arc Universities Group will act as the focal point for cross-Arc collaboration on science and research, identifying and delivering joint R&D projects and providing a pipeline of talent to knowledge-intensive businesses
• the Arc will strengthen its ability for businesses to commercialise ideas coming out of its universities and others. Key to this will be a network of ‘Living Laboratories’ that both trial technologies linked to new developments across the Arc and help address the Grand Challenges, developed by industry and local partners across the Arc. Arc partners will also use assets such as Harwell, Silverstone and Cranfield to establish new networks that support the convergence of technologies across sectors and seek to develop emerging districts such as West Cambridge
• finally, the Arc will seek to grow its role as a global research and innovation hub, acting as a UK magnet for international talent, R&D, FDI and research collaborations. The LEPs and MCA will work with the Department for International Trade, the Arc Universities Group and others to channel foreign investment in the assets and projects that will make the biggest impact on Arc-wide and UK growth

As outlined earlier, the Arc’s R&D strengths also makes it well placed to address the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge, with many assets such as Culham, Cranfield, Millbrook and Silverstone playing an important role in developing and testing new transport technologies.

To achieve this, government will work with the LEPs within the Arc and other local partners, including England’s Economic Heartland, to:

• utilise the considerable R&D assets within the Arc to meet the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge and government’s Road to Zero strategy. This will put the UK at the forefront of the design and manufacturing of zero emission vehicles, supporting government’s commitment to end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040
• build on the Arc’s existing role as a testbed for new transport technologies, such as automated vehicles and drones, working with HMG and Zenzic to competitively access existing research and development support, and scoping further opportunities to trial mobility services within the Arc
• support local authorities within the Arc, as set out in the Future of Mobility Urban Strategy, by providing guidance on design and planning to ensure new communities are designed and built to enable new approaches to mobility

People

The Arc is starting from a strong position with a well-functioning labour market - across the Arc employment is high compared to national averages and education attainment rates are generally good. The Arc is home to many world-leading higher education institutions that drive the knowledge rich economy.

It is vital that the Arc continues to build on this solid foundation in order for all people and communities across the Arc to have access to these opportunities and businesses have access to the workforce they need to meet future ambitions.

Businesses across the Arc consistently cite attracting and retaining a sufficiently skilled workforce as a particular challenge. Through the newly established Skills Advisory Panels, LEPs will bring local employers and skills providers together to understand current and future skills needs and put in place activity to address these local challenges. Through these Panels the 4 LEPs and government will work together to understand the challenges that businesses across the Arc face in securing the workforce they need to meet their future ambitions.

Whilst recognising the strong overall employment position of the Arc, it is also essential that work to drive growth across the region considers how best to address inequalities and challenges certain groups face in accessing and progressing in the labour market. Delivering transformational growth necessarily requires actions to support the key growth sectors identified in the economic context chapter above. But doing so in an inclusive and sustainable way will also require all partners to consider how best to: encourage good quality employment across the whole economy; support progression for those in low pay and low skilled employment and, support workers to stay in employment when they are at risk of losing their jobs due to issues such as age, health or automation.

To do this the LEPs will continue to build on the well-established relationships with local partners to address these deep-rooted challenges. This will include ongoing engagement with Jobcentre Plus, local education providers and community organisations.

Across the Arc, through Skills Advisory Panels, the LEPs will work with government to:

• review labour market intelligence across the Arc, to gain a better understanding of how skills provision is currently delivered and funding utilised. This will include working closely with the Department for Education through local Skills Advisory Panels and providers across the Arc to consider how local provision supports the ambitions set out throughout these strategies
• work with local employers to increase apprenticeship uptake across the Arc, supporting employers to maximise their Apprenticeship Levy contributions and drive social mobility
• work with local employers to support the effective role out of T levels and utilise local labour market intelligence to work with providers to consider how the local T level offer will support local businesses
• coordinate the work of Skills Advisory Panels to bring together training providers from across the Arc, with a view to establishing an Arc-wide skills marketplace. This will build on the LEPs’ positive working relationships with the Careers and Enterprise Company and other careers services, and work to improve provision across the Arc. This will utilise the evidence provided by each Skills Advisory Panel, connecting businesses with regional and national skills providers and people with targeted support including apprenticeships, STEM skills, T levels, technical and degree apprenticeships.

There will also be continued collaboration across the higher education sectors through the Arc Universities Group to ensure alignment between the higher education offer and the emerging needs of breakthrough businesses, including top quality leadership and management training supported by the business school network.

Infrastructure

The Arc as a whole is already experiencing infrastructure constraints – especially in energy, transportation, water and housing. Realising shared ambitions around economic and community growth will require the development of the right infrastructure to meet the needs of existing and new communities, supporting the economy of the Arc and championing the UK’s global competitiveness.

As well as getting the basics right, there is the opportunity for a step-change in connectivity. Government and Arc partners are working to deliver East- West Rail and the proposed Expressway which are central to enabling the long-term housing and business growth ambitions within the Arc. However, greater connectivity will not be fully delivered without the challenge of the ‘first-mile-last-mile’ being addressed. The Arc suffers from significant congestion which local partners are looking to address through innovations such as the proposed Cambridge Autonomous Metro and Luton DART (Direct Air Rail Transit).

The LEPs have already produced local energy strategies, documenting the energy needs of their local areas. These will be the starting point to consider the energy needs of the Arc as a whole; drawing in new evidence, joining up local energy strategy delivery and using the opportunities created through the growth of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc as a catalyst for a transformation of energy generation, distribution and use across the Arc.

Digital and data coverage in the Arc is good relative to much of the UK – with world-leading infrastructure in some of the region’s specialist facilities – though it remains patchy, especially in rural areas. This holds back growth given the opportunities for knowledge-intensive home-working and 5G-enabled innovations in the rural economy throughout the Arc.

The area’s natural capital and environmental infrastructure underpins and supports the local economy, offering flood protection and providing clean water and natural spaces. The changing climate will affect existing infrastructure resilience and future infrastructure needs, requiring us to create climate resilient places and infrastructure. In addition, the Arc presents a unique opportunity to deliver flood risk and water management through strategic activity across local authority and LEP boundaries.

The growth anticipated across the Arc gives us a chance to test innovative approaches to: improving digital and data connectivity; minimising energy demand and increasing energy supply; and addressing the Grand Challenges. The scale of growth also offers the chance to explore new ways of coordinating and funding the delivery of new infrastructure across the Arc. To seize these opportunities, the Arc Local Industrial Strategies announce that:

• local partners will collaborate with Department for Transport, Highways England, East-West Rail Company and England’s Economic Heartland to expand the economic benefits of planned strategic transport links, improvements to the Major Roads network and the first-mile-lastmile connections across the Arc
• government and local partners will conduct a review of recent evidence work at local, regional and nationallevel, to develop a shared evidence base for the current and future energy needs of the Arc. This could provide opportunities to test new energy policies or approaches within the Arc
• government and local partners will work to identify and diffuse best practice on digital infrastructure planning in the Arc and explore opportunities to align new transport infrastructure with digital infrastructure in the Arc. This will aim to support industry to accelerate the roll-out of full fibre networks, enabling accelerated growth of 5G technologies across the Arc
• local partners will work to standardise public data where possible - such as through the opportunity created by local government unitarisation in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire - and with support from government policy experts, to ensure that the opportunities to collect and capitalise on data are utilised. This will be done with a view to addressing Grand Challenges around the Future of Mobility, the Ageing Society, and Clean Growth
• government and local partners will work together across the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc to explore proposals for new approaches to funding infrastructure, as set out in government’s response to National Infrastructure Commission Report at Autumn Statement 2018

Business environment

The Arc is home to a dynamic business base and a range of high-growth and innovative firms. However, businesses across the Arc still encounter barriers to growth, particularly in accessing the support they need to scale-up rapidly, securing the right finance and access to the right commercial premises to start and grow.

The Arc’s collective ambition is to become a world-leading ecosystem for high-growth businesses: with an environment that enables them to commercialise technologies, grow to scale, and export.

Central to the Arc’s approach will be developing a Global Growth Network of internationally-focused businesses, scale-ups and sectoral clusters. Together, this will foster a breakthrough growth region and a driver for the UK economy.

Partners across the Arc will work with government and others across the following priorities:

• local partners will work with government, within existing budgets, to develop improved, joined-up business support for high-growth firms across the Arc. Central to this will be a network of the 4 Growth Hubs across the Arc, who will work and with existing support programmes to develop an Arc-wide offer to different kinds of business. They will profile the firms that can deliver the biggest shift in growth, productivity and exports in places, diagnosing barriers to growth in the firm’s capacity to innovate and increase productivity. As part of this, Arc partners will identify new ways to establish peer-topeer networks linking firms within and between sectoral clusters
• local partners and the British Business Bank will work together to help SMEs in the Arc to access the finance they need to grow their businesses. Local partners across the Arc will also explore the existing landscape and any gaps in finance for businesses, as well as the establishment of an Arcwide business angel network to better engage with early-stage investors
• local partners will work with government to develop a shared understanding of market failures in creating new commercial premises within the Arc. This will bring together a range of analysis already being undertaken locally, regionally, and nationally. This will ensure that the right premises are planned for, prioritised locally within any bids for future government funding, and built
• finally, partners across the Arc will work with the Department for International Trade to encourage greater trade and inward investment. This will build on existing engagement at LEP level and include the development of an Oxford-Cambridge Arc Internationalisation Delivery Plan and inward investment group. However, much more needs to be done if the Arc is to reach its potential as a global player able to compete with innovation-growth zones like Seoul, Helsinki, San Francisco and Toronto. This will include an Arc presence at MIPIM Cannes in March 2020 and an updated capital investment led Oxford-Cambridge Arc Brochure and Investment Prospectus which identifies investable opportunities. Work will also continue to better integrate Arc sector propositions into the Department for International Trade’s sector and market priority campaigns, linking the Arc’s key sectors into the 10 highest potential export and inward investment markets to drive Arc growth globally. This will involve analysis of available data on success across the Arc by sector and market. Each of the partners will work with the Department for International Trade to develop a LEP-level ‘chapter’ for the Internationalisation Delivery Plan, based on the priorities and assets set out in their Local Industrial Strategy

Places

Taken as a whole, this package of Arc-wide interventions, which sits alongside existing interventions being progressed by government and local partners, will support sustainable growth across the region, benefitting its residents, communities, businesses and the country more widely. Delivering transformational growth in this way will create opportunities across the Arc – spreading the benefits both to its prosperous centres and its more deprived communities, and across its urban and rural areas.

Doing so will require a holistic approach and partnership working with government and industry, to achieve growth and improve place-making, developing sustainable, resilient and culturally vibrant communities. This aims to provide a high quality of life for residents - now and in the future. The scale of growth envisaged across the Arc also offers the opportunity to plan for and build exemplar developments with high design standards; places where people want to live and work.

Heating and powering buildings accounts for 40% of the total energy usage in the UK.

By making new communities within the Arc more energy efficient and embracing smart technologies, energy demand and household bills can be cut, and economic growth boosted while meeting the country’s targets for carbon reduction.

Conserving and enhancing the natural environment is at the heart of ambitions for the Arc; growth offers an opportunity for environmental enhancement, in turn driving productivity and innovative place making. Government and local partners have agreed to embed ‘natural capital’ thinking throughout the approach to the Arc; harnessing nature to adapt to climate change, manage flood risk and deliver broader benefits to businesses and communities.

Working through existing partnerships, government and partners across the Arc will:

• consider ways to contribute towards the government’s Clean Growth Grand Challenge mission to at least halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030, supporting the Arc’s wider ambition to create clean, energy efficient and sustainable communities for all

As the national Industrial Strategy set out, we will work not just to preserve, but to enhance our natural capital – the air, water, soil and ecosystems that support all forms of life – since this is an essential basis for economic growth and productivity over the long term. To ensure that the environment in the Arc is left in a better state for future generations, local partners and government agree that:

• England’s 25 Year Environment Plan sets out our comprehensive approach to improving landscapes and habitats, and the aspiration to move to a policy of net environmental gain in future. The policy for the Arc should embody this approach in line with national policy, so local partners will work with government to explore opportunities for local delivery of the Plan within the Arc, including considering issues such as climate resilience, water management and biodiversity net gain
• local partners will also engage with government to co-design a local natural capital planning approach for the Arc, ensuring that the wider work on productivity is aligned
• intelligent and sensitive design should be used in new housing and infrastructure developments to create or enhance habitats in line with national policy
• government and the LEPs will also consider (i) ways to maximise environmental expertise across the Arc, creating opportunities to share best practice across public and private sectors; and (ii) how to empower the business community to champion and support the Arc’s natural assets, working together to attract and retain the skilled workforce of the future

Delivering for communities, businesses and the UK

This Strategy will deliver inclusive growth in Oxfordshire, improving sustainability, productivity, prosperity and quality of life. This is not limited to Oxfordshire: it will also deliver transformative growth for the rest of the country.

For Oxfordshire’s communities

Improved productivity will lead to better jobs, higher wages and increased prosperity for Oxfordshire’s residents, ensuring growth is inclusive, so that it brings benefits to all residents across Oxfordshire.

• as communities become more technology-enabled, they will be enabled to improve health and wellbeing as well as quality of life. Travel will be safer and smoother; the environment cleaner; digital health technologies will improve health outcomes and better meet the needs of an ageing society, delivering better more efficient public services
• improved infrastructure and connectivity will make Oxfordshire a more accessible and better place to live. The infrastructure improvements we want to deliver will improve physical and digital connectivity. Reduction in congestion and travel times will improve quality of life for people and communities.
• an improved skills and education programme will make Oxfordshire a place of opportunity for all residents, creating more pathways to provide young people and local communities with the skills needed to access new employment opportunities. Opportunities for re-skilling and upskilling will ensure everyone is able to engage with the economy as it grows
• Oxfordshire will be a more affordable, sustainable and inclusive place to live, reducing the levels of deprivation and marginalisation from the economy. Building on the Housing and Growth Deal and Local Plans we will deliver well-designed additional affordable housing, reducing the cost of living challenge in the county. This will ensure a healthier, more sustainable Oxfordshire for future generations.

Case study: Greater Change

Greater Change is an Oxford-based start-up. It is a social enterprise aimed at providing financial support to those who are homeless, providing a way for them to fund long-term savings goals. People who are homeless work with a support worker to agree a target purchase and budget for this. Members of the public then fund the goals of individual people directly through the Greater Change app and website, and money is sent directly to a charity that commits to buying the target purchase. It enables giving in a cashless society, increases the pool of potential givers, and provides those who are ‘street homeless’ with a safe way of saving. So far, Greater Change has raised over £10,000 and supported 20 people to achieve their long-term savings goal. Greater Change has now received confirmation of scale up funding and will use this to expand its services to more areas across the UK.

For Oxfordshire’s businesses

• Oxfordshire’s businesses will be supported to integrate technology and innovation to increase their productivity and profitability
• New investment will create new opportunities for Oxfordshire’s businesses – to compete internationally, and better commercialise and capture value from innovations. Oxfordshire’s strong global proposition will bring new investment into Oxfordshire’s businesses, supporting them from innovation through to commercialisation and international distribution
• A better connected innovation ecosystem, with seamless digital and physical connectivity, will help businesses operate more smoothly and make it easier for employees to travel across Oxfordshire. Better connectivity and more affordable housing will improve Oxfordshire’s quality of life for residents and its attractiveness as a location, to attract top talent and encourage talent to stay
• Improved skills provision at all levels in Oxfordshire will create a more skilled labour market, aligned to industry needs, for Oxfordshire’s businesses to recruit from. Developing new apprenticeship and career pathways, including for technical and vocational training, will provide new opportunities for residents and help provide businesses with the specific skill sets they need to succeed. It will also help increase the number of graduates who choose to stay and live and work in Oxfordshire
• Increased public and private R&D spending will support businesses to continue the research and innovation necessary to compete globally. The Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy will help the UK government deliver on its commitment to work with industry to boost spending on R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, championing cross-sector collaboration and innovation
• Businesses will have an important role in solving challenges and creating benefits for the local population that will in turn support their own needs. Both breakthrough and high potential businesses will benefit from new investment opportunities, technological adoption and innovation uptake. Both types of businesses will have a critical role to play in innovating to solve local and UK-wide challenges, developing solutions that benefit local communities

For the country

• Innovation and technological developments in Oxfordshire will deliver benefits and new supply chain opportunities across the UK. Oxfordshire’s strengths in transformative technologies already have spill over benefits for the rest of the UK
• Industries and businesses across the UK will benefit from increased access to international investment. Oxfordshire’s internationalisation strategy and development of global networks with other global innovation ecosystems will draw attention to the UK from the international investor community. Oxfordshire will become a centre of excellence for international investment in transformative technologies for the UK, channelling investment into key industries across the UK
• Oxfordshire can increase its contribution to the UK exchequer and continue to drive the UK’s economic growth. Oxfordshire is already a net contributor to the exchequer. Improving productivity and generating transformative growth in Oxfordshire will increase Oxfordshire’s total contribution to the UK economy.
• Oxfordshire’s strengths in transformative technologies will be applied to develop solutions to the UK’s Grand Challenges that can then be used across the UK. Oxfordshire is a centre of innovation in technologies that are shaping our futures. Innovation in these technologies can be applied and tested in Oxfordshire to develop solutions to some of the biggest challenges that are facing the UK, including clean growth, our ageing society, mobility and artificial intelligence. These solutions can then be used across the UK and internationally, solving real-world problems and improving lives

Implementation and evaluation

This Local Industrial Strategy will set the direction for Oxfordshire’s economy. Built upon solid foundations of clear evidence, it highlights where Oxfordshire and government will work together to maximise key strengths and tackle major challenges.

Governance

At the local level, the OxLEP Board will lead the implementation of this Local Industrial Strategy through its existing governance and delivery structures, embedding the Strategy’s priorities into its annual Delivery Plan and wider programme of activity. OxLEP will also work closely through the Oxfordshire Growth Board to ensure the ambitions of the LIS are fully aligned with wider growth aspirations, as set out in the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal. The Cities and Local Growth Unit will work with OxLEP to engage government in delivery at the local level as necessary.

At a regional level, the 3 LEPs and MCA, supported by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Oxford-Cambridge Unit and Cities and Local Growth Unit, will collaborate through the Productivity Group of the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc governance arrangements to deliver the shared Arc-level commitments, set out in all 4 Local Industrial Strategies for the Arc. This work will report to the Arc Leader’s Board, ensuring this workstream is aligned to shared work on place-making, connectivity and the environment, as well as central government’s national governance structures, including the Local Industrial Strategy Implementation Board and the cross-Whitehall Oxford-Cambridge Arc inter-departmental board and Arc advisory group.

Funding

This Local Industrial Strategy does not include any new spending commitments outside of existing budgets. Instead, it will inform the strategic use of local funding streams and, where relevant, spending and decisions at the national level and provide a catalyst for UK and international investment from the private sector. It will also help Oxfordshire decide on its approach to maximising the long-term impact of the new UK Shared Prosperity Fund once its details and priorities are announced at Spending Review. These and other components will inform and underpin an Investment Prospectus to be developed by local partners allowing both the public and private investors to understand how they can invest in the region to achieve Oxfordshire’s economic potential.

To demonstrate progress towards the long-term vision set out by this Local Industrial Strategy, the Strategy contains a number of specific actions. Where these actions are locally led, these will be drawn from local budgets which exist for those purposes with the objective of leveraging private investment and other resources; where actions are shared between Oxfordshire and government, they will be funded from existing local and departmental budgets, with funding allocated for those specific purposes. This Strategy does not represent all the priorities and action being developed in Oxfordshire. As detailed in this Strategy, Oxfordshire will regularly review the latest evidence to continue designing the most effective approaches and interventions to be at the forefront of the future UK economy. This Strategy sets out longterm ambitions and will continue to evolve as the economy changes. Oxfordshire will comply with all of the monitoring and evaluation requirements of each particular funding source, in addition to the wider requirement to monitoring the implementation of the Local Industrial Strategy as a whole.

Monitoring outcomes

As well as setting out specific short-term actions, this Local Industrial Strategy has also set out Oxfordshire’s long-term aspirations and the specific outcomes local partners are aiming to achieve. These will help guide future action and evaluate progress. By 2040, Oxfordshire will aim to have secured:

• its position as a globally leading innovation ecosystem in pioneering transformative technologies which are powered by dynamic and successful businesses in highly integrated science and technology clusters, delivering international market leadership for the UK and creating growth and supply chain opportunities in Oxfordshire and across the country
• a dynamic approach to growth which is inclusive and ensures that all communities across Oxfordshire have access to and benefit from the new employment opportunities and prosperity generated by a worldleading innovation ecosystem
• recognition as a location which harnesses the dynamic potential of its science and technological innovation for the benefit of local residents, business and improved public services and an exemplar for contemporary living and design which delivers sustainable and flourishing communities
• an employment and skills system which responds to local demand and harnesses business leadership to drive social mobility across Oxfordshire, creating pathways into employment and new careers opportunities into the global innovation ecosystem
• recognition as a location supporting progress towards carbon neutrality in a way that improves quality of life for residents, minimises the productivity impact on current businesses and maximises commercial opportunities across Oxfordshire

In order to ensure the opportunities in this Local Industrial Strategy are met, Oxfordshire will monitor the progress of the outlined commitments by developing a local Implementation Plan setting out clear milestones, deliverables and timings for the actions set out in this strategy.

Evaluation

The government is committed to devolution where there is a strong evidence-base, robust governance and delivery track-record in place. Robust evaluation is an essential element of demonstrating the effective use of existing public funding.

Oxfordshire proposes that progress in meeting the area’s Local Industrial Strategy ambitions is monitored through a two-pronged framework. First, there will be a set of SMART LEP deliverables, which will be measured and reported on as part of the LEP’s Annual Delivery Plan. Second, there will be a set of wider economic indicators, which the LEP can track and report on, and which will – if deviating from projected trajectories – serve as a prompt for discussions with the OxLEP Board, Programme Sub-Group, government and other stakeholders around possible corrective action. It will examine opportunities to embed evaluation into programmes and policies where possible. The LEP will also continue to assess the latest evidence on ‘what works’ for interventions, in collaboration with independent experts.

References

1. Interim findings from ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc economic evidence study’, AECOM and Oxford Economics, 2019. Taken from The Oxford-Cambridge Arc: government ambition and joint declaration between government and local partners, MHCLG, 2019 ↩

2. Anglia Ruskin University, Buckinghamshire New University, Cranfield University, Oxford Brookes University, The Open University, University of Bedfordshire, University of Buckingham, University of Cambridge, University of Northampton and University of Oxford. ↩

3. Cambridge: driving growth in life sciences: Exploring the value of knowledge-clusters on the UK economy and life sciences sector, AstraZeneca and MedImmune, 2018 ↩

4. Silverstone Park, 2017 ↩

5. Partnering for Prosperity: a new deal for the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford Arc, National Infrastructure Commission, 2017 ↩

6. Government response to ‘Partnering for Prosperity: a new deal for the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford Arc’, 2018 ↩

7. Oxfordshire Baseline Economic Review, OxLEP, 2018 ↩