The Crown Estate, the property company that manages the British monarchy’s lands and holdings, announced last Tuesday that it had acquired a 221-acre site next to the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, about 25 kilometres south of Oxford. The Crown Estate projects the site will be worth £4.5 billion, generate 30,000 jobs nationally, and build as many as 400 homes.
The investment is being made as part of the Estate’s commitment to invest £1.5 billion into science, innovation, and technology. The Chief Executive of the Crown Estate, Dan Labbad, said: “The ambition of Harwell East is to create a space for great science to flourish.” He noted that the “acquisition marks the latest step in our journey to support the UK’s fast-growing sectors”.
The Science Minister Lord Vallance said that the “vast economic potential of the site underlines precisely why we are determined to fully unlock the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor”. The announcement follows the plans unveiled earlier this year by Chancellor Rachel Reeves for major investments in infrastructure, technology, and research in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.
As a company sitting between private and public ownership, the Crown Estate sees most of its income go to the HM Treasury, and closely cooperates with government-led schemes to increase investment. Profits made by the company are partly used to fund King Charles III’s work and initiatives. Reeves’s expected announcement of £10 billion of private investment into the UK will include the Crown Estate’s Harwell East science park.
The Harwell Science and Innovation Campus was itself formed as part of the government initiative in 2006, and has offices and laboratories for organisations working in biotech, energy, and battery systems, and both the European and UK space agencies. The announced investment would mark a major expansion of the campus, which has seen high demand for lab and office space.
The Crown Estate has other significant ongoing investments in Oxfordshire. Last year, the company became a partner in a £125 million project to transform the shuttered Debenhams store in Oxford city centre into laboratory space, alongside Oxford Science Enterprises and Pioneer Group. The Harwell East site will join the Debenhams redevelopment, the new Oxford life sciences hub, the Oxford North innovation district, and the Oxford Science Park as part of the general expansion of sciences and research funding.
