The MP met with Adrian Hawkins OBE, Chair, Stevenage Development Board and Chair, Skills Advisory Panel, Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, Steve Martin, VP and Head, Biopharm Discovery at GSK, Dr Sally Ann Forsyth OBE, CEO, Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, and Dr Stephen Ward, Chief Manufacturing Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, on Thursday 27 January to hear about their shared vision for the cluster and the urgent need for a skilled workforce to support that growth.

The campus on Gunnels Wood Road comprises GSK, Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre and Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst. It is central to the UK’s largest cell and gene therapy cluster and the third largest globally thanks to its clustering of R&D and manufacturing excellence and its proximity to London, Oxford and Cambridge.

(From left): Dr Stephen Ward, Chief Manufacturing Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult; Rachel Castle, Director, UK Corporate Government Affairs, GSK; Stephen McPartland, MP for Stevenage; Steve Martin, VP and Head, Biopharm Discovery at GSK; Adrian Hawkins OBE, Chair, Stevenage Development Board and Chair, Skills Advisory Panel, Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership; Dr Sally Ann Forsyth OBE, CEO, Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst

Over the past year, the New Town has attracted considerable investment with:

• GSK currently formalising the sale and development of 33 acres to unlock up to £400m in new investment and create up to 5,000 highly-skilled jobs, over the next five to ten years;
• Reef developers transforming the former Marshgate town centre car park site into a £66m European Manufacturing Headquarters of Autolus;
• North Herts College proposing to open its Stevenage Innovation and Technology Centre in September to help develop a local workforce to support the town’s fast growing life sciences and advanced engineering sectors located on Gunnels Wood Road;
• £37.5m Towns Fund to support a package of measures to help communities to build back better after the pandemic;
• A further £565k from the Government’s Community Renewal Fund to help realise Stevenage’s ambitions to evolve from a pioneer post-war New Town into a future STEM city.

Cell and gene therapy is one of the fastest-growing health and life sciences in the world, contributing around £74bn to the UK economy and a quarter of a million jobs per year. Stevenage is at the heart of this growth and has been designated a High Potential Opportunity location for cell and gene and a Life Sciences Opportunity Zone by Government. The total private equity investment in biotechnology raised in Stevenage is similar to that of Cambridge, Oxford and London.

This exponential growth and scale of investment has led to an urgent need for a skilled workforce. According to a 2021 UK Cell and Gene Therapy Skills Demand Survey Report, the forecast skills demand nationwide for 2026 is 10,000 bioprocessing jobs, a growth of 151% from today. It states that ‘there is an urgent need to prioritise skills provision to continue the substantial growth of UK companies and for the UK to be a global leader in advanced medicine manufacturing’.

Stephen McPartland, Member of Parliament for Stevenage, said: “It is an amazing facility and I remember laying a commemorative brick back in 2011 when we were originally building the site. It is still there alongside our hopes and dreams to make Stevenage the hub for these exciting new technologies and treatments. We have already come a long way with the support of over £200 million of Government investment and we are still just at the start as we plan even more rapid expansion to cement Stevenage’s global leadership role in this area.”

Adrian Hawkins OBE and Stephen McPartland MP for Stevenage

Adrian Hawkins OBE, Chair, Stevenage Development Board, and Chair, Skills Advisory Panel, Hertfordshire LEP, said: “I was absolutely delighted to welcome Stephen McPartland to this fantastic campus. No one who comes here can fail to be impressed at the scale of work being undertaken to support advances in the development and manufacturing of innovative therapies.

“We have an unrivalled opportunity to capitalize on that growth and create levelling up opportunities for our communities by developing a highly skilled local workforce that can service the sector’s needs. Central to this vision is the new 4,000sqm state-of-the-art Innovation & Technology Centre to be operated by North Hertfordshire College in partnership with key businesses to provide new training opportunities.

“This sector growth on our doorstep opens up tremendous opportunities for apprentices, graduates, those already working in the sector who wish to relocate and those outside of the sector to retrain. With a focus on lifetime skills, this will have a very positive impact on the town’s regeneration and help us to realise our ambition to make Stevenage a future STEM city.”

Dr Sally Ann Forsyth OBE, CEO at Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC), said: “There are around 40 companies in the SBC community, including many life science start-ups. Together, we currently support over 1,000 jobs locally and contribute £65m to the Hertfordshire economy. The campus provides many high-quality jobs for the local community as well as apprenticeship and training opportunities for school leavers and people looking to build on their existing skills. By 2040, there are expected to be over 3,000 jobs at SBC-based companies and £196m contributed to the local economy.”

Steve Martin, VP and Head, Biopharm Discovery at GSK, said: “Our global R&D hub in Stevenage is a key location for GSK in developing our pipeline of vital medicines. Our scientists here are focused on the science related to the immune system, the use of human genetics and advanced technologies, aiming to discover transformational medicines for patients. We welcome the opportunity to work with local partners and are extremely excited about the plans to develop one of Europe’s largest life science campuses in Stevenage.”

Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, said: “The support of stakeholders like the local community represented by Stephen McPartland MP is essential to our success. The exciting collaborations with industry partners within and around our Stevenage Manufacturing Innovation Centre make Stevenage a global hub of CGT innovation. We have seen increasing national and international investment in our facility in Stevenage, with companies drawn not only to our state-of-the-art manufacturing innovation capabilities, but also to the continuous efforts in developing highly skilled local workforce. We are excited to continue to work with the Government, as well as the local community, in supporting the enormous growth in the UK CGT industry, developing a skilled UK-ATMP workforce through the Advanced Therapies Apprenticeship Community (ATAC) and Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network (ATSTN) initiatives.”

It is now extremely clear that vaccinations and boosters are the winning formula in the fight against Covid as within little more than 12 months the virus has ceased its killing spree at the levels first witnessed in late 2020 and early 2021. The Government – content in this knowledge – is allowing society to be reminded of the vaccines’ efficacy, but sadly still delivering volumes of infected unvaccinated and perhaps less public-spirited people into the arms of the already distraught NHS, who are equally affected by rising infection rates.

The current narrative for society’s fight against the Covid pandemic, which is now endemic in the UK, is more attuned to “let them eat cake” than “jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war”. It is clear that the Government, the health system and society in general is lost for words in encouragement of anti-vaxxers to protect themselves. The vast array of vaccination centres still deployed ready and willing to deliver first jabs as well as boosters, offering the final chance of survival at the last chance saloon. But sadly, their relevance and life-saving capacity is still failing to convince some and falling on the remaining deaf ears in this plight to deliver public information.

The advent of 2022 prepares us all for a return to a life of near normality, with Covid jabs joining the humble flu jab in the future protection of the ever-increasing elderly population. Is it time now to question whether the current NHS model is fit for purpose in a world of increasing health risk and information intolerance and distortion? Should we be thinking more clearly about the future purpose of the NHS in the context of health education rather than just health defect resolution? It’s clear that a service free at the point of delivery is much loved by us all, but we equally should all be demonstrating a respect for the costs of such a service and our responsibility to others where we are able, to ensure that the much-appreciated NHS system continues.

Covid 19 has been a lesson for us all in both the relevance and importance of the nation’s health service and how, once again in this particular war on the virus, “so much is owed by so many to so few”, in our wonderful NHS.

About the Author
Adrian Hawkins OBE was awarded his honour by the Queen in the 2021 New Years Day Honours list for his services to business. A lifetime businessman, Adrian Chairs biz4Biz a business support organisation which he founded 11 years ago to create a business network in the Home Counties. Adrian is also the Managing Director of Welding World, Chairman of the Hertfordshire LEP Skills and Employment Board and Chairman of the Stevenage Development Board. Adrian has 40 years’ experience in the world of business.

Friday 24th September: The opportunity to meet up with Sir Oliver Heald QC MP the long serving professional MP for the North East Herts constituency and a previous Solicitor General for the U.K. Government. Sir Oliver kindly introduced me to the Right Honourable Matt Hancock MP former Minister of State for Health at a time of great importance to the nation as the Covid pandemic started, spread, and subsided as a result of providing the right conditions for Vaccine development and delivery.

I had first met Matt in July 2016 at a meeting organised by the now Lord Lilley of Offley in Harpenden when Matt had been appointed Minister of Digital and Culture with the added responsibility for Media and Sport in 2018 when he then subsequently moved onto the Minister of Health and Social Care. It was a great opportunity for him to tell us his history and how his family had invented the PAF (Postcode Area Finder) which we all use today across the many apps that automatically find our address from our postcode. He explained how his family business almost went bust owing to the delayed delivery of a payment from one customer and how he has experienced the ups and downs of business life as a result.

I started my conversation with Matt last Friday by thanking him for his service to the country in his many ministerial roles, but particularly his most recent one. It is one thing holding the coveted position of Secretary of State for Health but quite another when the world is blighted by a Covid pandemic and society is so adversely affected as a result. It must be said that he managed the crisis well. There were clearly many mistakes which the government made which is often the case at a time of a war albeit in this case with a virus, but there were clearly very important and positive steps made early in the crisis that created the situation we now see developing.

I asked Matt why the press did not make more of the position regarding our auspicious first steps with the AstraZeneca vaccine and the clear advantage provided by Brexit in securing a vaccine without the EU negotiating on our behalf, which as we all know was greatly delayed as a result and which made the EU cite the UK and Brexit as the issue. Matt remarked that his government wanted to keep a lid on their exuberance, as they did not want to offend the EU and it was Boris Johnson who insisted on maintaining harmony with our EU neighbours.

In relation to the adoption of the AstraZeneca vaccine, I said how marvellous it was that Pascal Soriot the CEO had taken the decision not to profit from the supply, as in the words of the AstraZeneca CEO, “He was not able to look his children in the eye if he had”. Matt agreed and then stated that he had insisted on securing exclusivity for the initial supplies to ensure that Donald Trump did not dive in and secure supplies ahead of the UK. Our prompt response to obtaining supplies has led us back to mixing in public once again and this would not have been the case without such early adoption and securing supplies. It was wonderful to be mixing publicly once again and we definitely owe a debt of gratitude to Matt and his Cabinet colleagues for their hard work and diligence during the pandemic and getting us through the worst of it.

Sir Oliver Heald has now served his constituents for the past 29 years and Matt made the point that he had greatly assisted him at various times in Government. Sir Oliver said “Matt Hancock held a great Office of State at a time of national crisis, and it was fascinating to hear first-hand how the early decision to invest in vaccines was made and how the roll-out was achieved so quickly. Matt had been told it could take 5 years and it was delivered in months. Matt also answered a range of questions about the challenges of the pandemic.”

Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP and Sir Oliver Heald QC MP

There suddenly appears to be a new found wealth that is driving this desire for closer proximity to the electorate. Whilst billions of pounds have been set aside to support the Covid pandemic and facilitate growth post pandemic, we appear to have found a new confidence in our ability to fund activities despite the level of debt shouldered by most G7 countries. Has our Government gone “Crypto” is the Britcoin a reality to follow the unfettered Bitcoin? Whilst I applaud the support for many businesses provided by Government during Covid, is there a plan at any time afterwards to balance the books?

Will we be faced with redundancies or resignations following the removal of furlough? We are riding high on state aid for our homesteads, but once the guaranteed income is removed will businesses reach that make or break tipping point and reduce their staff levels or will they equally be faced with a deluge of resignations in a restricted labour market? It is my belief that we are facing a false dawn. Remove the enforced Covid arrangements and the new normal will be business as usual. The Hospitality sector in particular has been the first casualty resulting from the labour shortage created by Covid where many overseas workers have returned to the safety of their families in their native countries to see out the pandemic. Returning to the UK has been made much more difficult following immigration rules introduced in the meantime created by Brexit. This has skewed our thinking around unemployment in particular and will stimulate wage increases at this end of the employment market.

Rising house prices resulting from a greater appreciation of the countryside and the need for social distancing, home working offices and a garden, will place greater pressures on many other employers to increase wages. The more than a million empty homes in England and the more than one million homes with planning permission yet to be developed, might become the new wasteland of oversupply, once the impact of higher wages finds its way to consumer pricing, driving up inflation.

Those with the requisite skills will benefit from this “brave new world” ahead and really should take the opportunity to take the offer from the highest bidder to support their families new way of life. Indeed many may love the option of continued home working and others may desire a return to the old ways which may also be the arbiter of change for the future. The people will decide what is right for them and the companies likewise. Decisions around redundancies have been clearly delayed by the furlough scheme, but soon these decisions must be made as we near the opportunity for the resumption of normal service by business and the various safety nets are removed.

And at the point where obfuscation becomes the order of the day, is this the moment when devolution makes more sense again? Will we see a return of decision making back to the regions once the money supply tightens and pleading poverty becomes the new order of the day? The Government will likely have little choice. We are very likely to see rising inflation, higher levels of unemployment a spate of Company closures and a continuance of some Covid measures as public sympathy for Government turns to enmity. We will require structured tendering from Regions once more as the political blame game starts again and Government hastens its departure from their previous decisions.

Business as usual following the release of pent up demand will return with vengeance and it will fall to businesses across the land to foot the eventual bill for the necessary profligacy that the pandemic has incurred. It’s time to create the action plan wherever you sit in all of this and make the right play in what will be a new way of operating for us all.

#TheBigShift @biz4Biz @weldingworld

Adrian Hawkins, Chairman of biz4Biz, said “We are in uncharted territory. I have been involved with my own SME companies for 40 years and whilst I experienced many recessions, I have never seen anything like the situation created by this pandemic. In recent times and owing to my involvement with biz4Biz, the Herts LEP and the Herts Growth Hub as a result, I have been instrumental in assisting SMEs find advice and financial support wherever possible. No one can conceive just how painful the pandemic has been for SMEs”.

‘Unlocking Britain’ the plan for SME business recovery

Is there a likelihood for matters to be far more painful in the future? We hope not! Most SMEs are driven by a desire to do things in their own way in their style and because this is an individualist trait, we must consider supporting their enthusiasm for the challenges that lay ahead created by this “State inflicted Debt burden” a necessary cost to keeping their staff safe.

We need to raise their spirits and demonstrate how to rebuild a business that has suffered such surreal devastation from the lockdown. The last thing any SME will need in the future is a demand to repay a debt secured on the business to help them get through this pandemic. The scheme promoted by Bim Afolami MP is masterful and forward thinking in “Unlocking Britain” in the most appropriate way.

The equity for debt proposal could also “Reignite SME Growth and Competitiveness”, a national scheme supported by the University of Hertfordshire, the LEP Network, Action Coach, the Herts LEP and biz4Biz alongside many others to help deliver first aid to businesses and ensure that SMEs focus on the strengths of their business and increase their efficiency, productivity and profitability. With a smaller amount of Government funding to assist this proven support mechanism, it is hoped that SMEs will leave this pandemic stronger than they entered.

My tenant has asked me to reduce the rent. Should I agree?

You’re under no obligation to agree to reduce the rent. A tenant’s requirement to pay rent continues, even if they cannot occupy due to the pandemic.

The Covid-19 crisis has seen the government introduce a voluntary Code of Practice for Commercial Property Relationships, which encourages landlords and tenants to work together to alleviate its impact. While the Code does not change the legal relationship between the landlord and tenant, temporary rent arrangements between them may be needed – such as rent holidays or reduced rent. Be aware that the Code applies until 24 June 2021.

If your tenant requests a rent reduction, they should be clear as to why they need It and also provide financial evidence. As a landlord, if you feel unable to agree concessions, make sure you explain why. However, if you do decide to reduce rent, you should document this in a side letter.

What do I need to consider when agreeing to a side letter?

The duration of the concession. If the rent concession includes other rents under the lease (such as insurance payments and service charge). And if there will be an impact on rent review.

Make sure you consider if any other consent is required:

• If your property is mortgaged, you may need additional approval from the lender.
• If there’s a superior landlord above you, check if their support is needed.

It may be worth getting legal advice on other options specific to your circumstances.

My tenant has stopped paying rent, can I deduct rent payments from their rent deposit?

If there is a rent deposit in place, you may deduct the outstanding payments, provided the document governing the deposit permits it. However, the Code suggests tenants do not need to top up the deposit until it is ‘reasonable and realistic’ for them to do so. And, if your tenant becomes insolvent, there may be restrictions on your ability to draw funds from the deposit.

Can I forfeit the lease for non-payment of rent?

In March 2020, the government passed the Coronavirus Act 2020. This prevented landlords from forfeiting commercial leases for non-payment of rent until 30 June 2020 but has now been extended until 31 December and will be reviewed thereafter. As this suspension applies to forfeiture for non-payment, you may be able to forfeit if other grounds are available. Landlords should also consider the risk of rental voids and business rates liability in deciding whether or not to attempt to forfeit the lease.

Can I recover costs I incur for deep cleaning via the service charge and for any additional Covid-19 related services?

A landlord’s liability for providing services and the tenant’s liability to pay for services under the lease continue during COVID-19. Most service charge provisions will include the recovery of cleaning costs and an obligation to clean common parts (including deep cleaning).
Landlords will also sometimes have the ability to provide and charge for additional services where it’s reasonable to do so. If you are unable to provide certain services or your tenant is in financial difficulties, discuss the situation and negotiate temporary service charge arrangements.

Written by

Rachael Spalton

Partner and Head of Commercial Property at Longmores Solicitors

Please note the contents of this blog are given for information only and must not be relied upon. Legal advice should always be sought in relation to specific circumstances.