The UK Innovation Corridor (UKIC) has today welcomed the Chancellor’s £800 million funding commitment to the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, while urging the government to adopt a multi-valley strategy that harnesses the full breadth of Britain’s innovation ecosystem.
Responding to the announcement, UKIC Chair Jackie Sadek said the investment represented a major vote of confidence in the UK’s knowledge economy, but added that realising the government’s ambition of a European Silicon Valley would require looking beyond a single corridor.
Jackie Sadek, Chair of the UK Innovation Corridor, said:
“This is exactly the kind of bold, infrastructure-led investment that Britain’s innovation economy needs, and we welcome it wholeheartedly. The Chancellor is right that Oxford and Cambridge are world-class assets.
But Britain doesn’t need one Silicon Valley. It needs a network of them. The Innovation Corridor should be the next cab off the rank. It already generates £284 billion in GVA and has produced a quarter of England’s new knowledge-intensive jobs over the past decade.
It is home to globally significant assets in life sciences, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing, from the Wellcome Genome Campus and Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst to the new national UKHSA campus at Harlow.
The government’s own Industrial Strategy recognises that growth clusters do not respect administrative boundaries. A multi-valley approach that connects Oxford-Cambridge with the London-Cambridge Innovation Corridor would unlock even greater returns than either geography could achieve alone.
We stand ready to work with the Chancellor and our friends across the OxCam corridor to make that supercharge growth and innovation in the UK.”
