Science City York - How scientific? How successful?

Summary

An analysis of the activities of Science City York reveals:

• (i) the focus on science has been lost and the emphasis has shifted to the very different “creativity”, a term that covers nearly anything in the 21st C economy.
• (ii) the claim by Science City York, that it has attracted major bioscience investment to the city, is greatly exaggerated.
• (iii) when asked for data to verify Science City York’s claim, the City of York Council could only provide a list of 20 scientifically-based companies or organisations attracted to the city (not 150 as implied by Science City York). Furthermore, a high % of those companies or organisations existed before SCY was formed. The number of people employed by the few small companies that have started in the York area since Science City York was formed total only a few hundred, not the thousands claimed by SCY.
• (iv) the analysis conducted is supported by evidence in an analysis conducted by SEMTA in 2007(www.semta.org.uk/pdf/BioSSA_Stage_1v4_October2007.pdf).

The Hype

Science City York (SCY) Press Release

November 2005. Taken from SCY Website 12 March 2008.

“Over the last 10 years Bioscience York has become one of the most dynamic and fastest growing bioscience clusters in the UK comprising over 150 organisations in York and North Yorkshire, contributing cutting-edge research and technology that is being exported all over the globe. In York itself there are more than 50 bioscience organisations, which together employ 3,700 people – with significant activity across North Yorkshire.

Bioscience is now one of the largest and fastest-growing industry sectors in the global economy, generating over 16 billion euros annually in Europe alone.

The cluster, which was established in 1995, was the brainchild of a small group of academics and industry leaders, who believed that York and North Yorkshire – with a critical mass of 1,500 bioscience researchers and an investment of £18 million since 1991 – had the expertise and potential to become one of the most successful bioscience networks in the UK. Its marked success over the last 10 years has been built on strong links between business and academic institutions. The University of York provides leading-edge research, specialist facilities and a highly skilled workforce. This coupled with the region’s strong infrastructure and specialist business support services has developed into a thriving bioscience community.

“Bioscience York is one of the most successful biotech communities outside Oxford, Cambridge and London. Covering a broad spectrum that extends from medical biotechnology to devices and diagnostics, nutraceuticals, environmental technologies and agricultural biosciences and with links across the globe, its growth and development over the last decade has been phenomenal,” said Professor Tony Robards OBE, Chair of Bioscience York.

The 150 organisations within the cluster include major international players such as Smith & Nephew and Nestle Research and Development, large government agencies like the Central Science Laboratory and Pesticides Safety Directive, as well as award-winning SMEs, spin-outs from the University of York, start-up businesses and a core of established, successful small enterprises.

Examples include:

• · Xceleron: A University spin-out company based in the BioCentre at York Science Park that has become the world’s foremost company using the ultra sensitive platform technology of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) in biomedical research. The company’s research is helping to speed up drug development for pharmaceutical companies across the globe and has attracted £2 million in investment so far this year.
• · Bioflame: A high-technology company with state-of-the-art environmental solutions for turning waste materials into energy. Winners of the Venturefest Yorkshire Business Award in 2005, the Pickering-based company has provided jobs and investment in an area identified by the government as a priority for economic investment. In February this year they signed a £1.2 million contract to build a 0.5 MW biomass and green waste power generating station in North Yorkshire.
• Ÿ Coronet Medical Technologies: A Ripon-based company that has developed the most comprehensive range of single-use instrumentation for corneal graft surgery currently available on the world market. The company, which has won two DTI SMART awards, has doubled in size every three years since it was launched in 1993 and now exports to 48 countries across the globe.
• Science City York, the initiative to create business and employment opportunities in the York area through science and technology exploitation, was created out of by Bioscience York in 1998. Now the parent organisation of Bioscience York, Science City York supports two other industry driven clusters of technology-based business: Creative York and IT & Digital York.
  Science City York was one of six national Science Cities designated in the 2005 Budget by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. In the last seven years, more than 2,600 jobs and 60 new companies have been launched across the three technology clusters supported by the work of Science City York.

 

The Reality

Where are the 150 Bioscience companies or organisations that SCY claim?

How well are the claims in the above Press Release about the success of Science City York, or Bioscience York, substantiated? Given that Science City York is a publicly funded body one would think it would be easy to verify the claims. Not so.

When the University of York sought planning permission to build offices for > 1800 people on greenbelt land on the outskirts of York they claimed that such development was needed to house the high tech companies that would be attracted by SCY. However, at the same time the University owned a Science Park nearby on which most of the companies were not really high tech, scientific or related to the University research base. An analysis of the current clients of the Science Park (conducted in 2006/7) showed that demand from high tech companies for facilities had not even filled the current Science Park. Undertaking that analysis, it became clear that some of the claims being made by SCY were hard to verify. The claims made in the Press Release reproduced above for example are quite specific hence it should be possible for SCY to verify them.

Consequently some simple information was requested by Dr Richard Firn in 2006 from SCY under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. The request simply asked for a list of the top 50 companies that had been attracted to the region as a result of SCY activity, the list to be ranked by the number of employees. This information would enable the success of SCY to be judged. SCY failed to respond appropriately:

• SCY did not provide the information within the deadline required under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act
• SCY tried to claim exemption under the terms of the Data Protection Act despite the fact that no personal information had been requested.
• When the first failure was pointed out to SCY, they then adopted a series of tactics to avoid disclosure. SCY reluctantly accepted that the Data Protection Act was inappropriate but then SCY claimed that the information requested was confidential (hence could be withheld under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act). When the fallacy of this claim was put to SCY, they still refused to provide the data consequently their view was put to the Information Commissioner. Given that no confidential information has been requested by Dr Richard Firn, it was not surprising that the Information Commissioner agreed that the information should be provided under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. However, the Information Commissioner noted that because of the way in which Science City York was constituted (funded jointly by the University of York and the City of York Council), SCY were technically not a public body hence need not comply with the Freedom of Information Act (odd that SCY did not seem to know this!). However, Information Commissioner noted that because SCY existed to provide the information to the City of York Council (CYC) and the University of York, both publically funded bodies, the CYC should provide the data if requested. Consequently, the CYC was asked for the same information by Dr Richard Firn but they also tried to avoid disclosure by claiming that the companies had provided information in confidence. However, in response Dr Firn argued that no company had provided the information he had requested, because the list being sought was compiled by SCY on behalf of the CYC. Dr Firn appealed to CYC and noted that he would again seek the support of the Information Commissioner if there was a further unjustified delay because the Information Commissioner had already ruled that the information should be provided. The CYC finally provided some of the information requested. However, the list of companies that CYC provided was not ranked as requested and there was no information on employee number despite the fact that some of that information is in the public domaine. Clearly SCY and the CYC had not lived up to the spirit of Freedom of Information Act. One wonders why?

Science City York - redefining the term science?

Because I was not provided with the information requested, I have had to try to piece together the picture that follows. I have looked at each company on the list provided by CYC (from data presumably collected by SCY) and tried to judge whether the claims made by SCY are verfiable.

At an early stage of the analysis it became apparent that SCY has redefined the term “science” so that SCY could lay claim to much more inward investment. SCY now equates “science” with “creative”. This change in emphasis is clearly shown in the information finally provided by CYC to Richard Firn. The list of companies was divided into three categories (or “grouped into “clusters”” as noted by Fred Weeks of CYC in his letter). These three “clusters” were:

• Bioscience (20 companies or organisations)
• Creative (19 companies or organisations)
• IT & Digital (20 companies or organisations)
• So immediately one of the claims of SCY is seen to be misleading. SCY is no longer concentrating its attempts on science-related activities. At best only one third of the companies or organisations listed are related to science, let alone Bioscience. Indeed the manager of SCY, Anna Rooke, in an interview is quoted by the Evening Press (17/02/06) said “what we mean by science is much broader than that ... it could be a graphic designer or someone working in the fashion industry”. Can someone working in the fashion industry or a graphic designer really be termed a “scientist”? Clearly it is convenient for SCY to include non-science activities in its remit but it is fundamentally misleading and hides SCY’s failure to attract significant inward investment from major Bioscience organisations or companies. So the claim in the press release on the SCY website:
• “Over the last 10 years Bioscience York has become one of the most dynamic and fastest growing bioscience clusters in the UK comprising over 150 organisations in York and North Yorkshire, contributing cutting-edge research and technology that is being exported all over the globe. In York itself there are more than 50 bioscience organisations, which together employ 3,700 people – with significant activity across North Yorkshire”

is seen to be misleading or the information provided to RDF by CYC is wrong. The list of 20 bioscience companies provided by CYC were from all over the region yet the SCY web site claims 50 bioscience organisations in York alone! Odd that CYC can only come up with 20 names if there are 50?

The confusion that exists as to what SCY represents was further confused by the CYC in its document Local Development Plan, Allocation DPD Issues and Options (March 2008) by claiming that:

• “Science City York (SCY) essentially contains three broad components: Information and Communications Technologies, Heritage and Arts Technology and Bioscience and Healthcare.”

So the emphasis of SCY has changed from bioscience, to science, to creative and finally to vague topics such as “Heritage and Arts Technology”. Any focus that SCY once had has been eroded and Science City York is now a misleading headline.

So we have a misleading name to the SCY initiative and less that half of the claimed bioscience companies claimed by SCY are known to their sponsors at CYC. However let us now analyse the 20 bioscience organisations that are the SCY successes - the missing 130 such organisations cannot be subject to scrutiny! 

An analysis of the 20 bioscience companies on the CYC list

Information about the 20 companies on the CYC list of Bioscience Companies was sought using only the web - hence the information is publicly available. The only information that was hard to find was the number of employees of each company or organisation. Hence where no employee numbers were found, an estimate was made using logic and common sense. However, of the 1200 employees estimated to cover those 20 companies or organsiations, about 700 are from two public agencies (CSL, PSD) which publish their employee numbers hence are accurate. Another 300 people appear to be employed by Smith & Nephew and Covance (in Harrogate!) so the biggest uncertainty in employee number comes from the remaining 16 small companies which only account for the remaining 200 people. Even if the estimate for the 16 small companies are inaccurate, it is very unlikely that this sector of small bioscience companies could account for more than 20% of the total.

So to summarise this part of the analysis, the CYC list of bioscience companies/organisations supposedly most important to SCY employ not 3,700 people but maybe 1200 people. Furthermore, and more significantly, the great majority of those jobs (CSL, PSD, S&N and Covance in italics in the Table) existed in York before SCY was formed.

The individual companies and organisations on the list are summarised as follow:

• Animalcare (www.animalcare.co.uk/).  Founded in York in 1988 as the Veterinary Drug Company, several years before SCY was formed. Its publically available web site states that it employs 30 people. This company seems to be sales-based rather than driven by its own scientific research.
• Avacta (www.avacta.com).  “Formed in 2004, as a spin-out from The University of Leeds, Avacta is The Biophysics Company specialising in solving high value problems through provision of contract services and innovative new technologies for the biopharmaceutical and other sectors. Avacta's technology development programmes are aimed at creating step change improvements in the biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing process, delivering huge value to its clients and shareholders”. (Avacta website). Publically available company information notes 20 employees.
• BioFlame (www.bioflame.co.uk/). A small company based in Pickering, developing biomass burning schemes. One publically available source claims < 10 employees.
• CSL (www.csl.gov.uk/). A DEFRA agency. Formed from former MAFF labs and now the largest science based organisation in York. Employs ~ 500 people. Predates the SCY initiative.
• Coronet Medical Technologies (No web site found). A small company (<10 employees) based in Ripon. Sells single-use instrumentation for corneal graft surgery.
• Covance (www.covance.com). Covance Harrogate (a few hundred employees) is part of the multinational Covance group (8000 employees worldwide). The Harrogate Laboratory existed under different ownership long before SCY existed (30+ years) hence cannot be said to have been attracted to the region by SCY activity.
• Forsite Diagnostics (www.forsitediagnostics.com/). A small spin-out company (< 10 employees?) from the DEFRA CSL laboratory making diagnostic kits for plant health.
• It Is Diagnostics (itisint.com/index.htm). “Based in North Yorkshire at the foot of the Cleveland Hills, IT-IS was incorporated in April 2004 and was originally formed by two like-minded partners who shared an inventive nature and a passion for technology.”Small company with < 10 employees?
• Medvance (www.medvance.co.uk/). A 10 year old company carrying out medical trials. Based near Selby. Number of emplyees unknown (<20?).
• Natures’s Laboratory. A small company based in Goatland, which aims to develop use of bee pollen in health care. (< 5 employees?). Seems to be based on research at University of Strathclyde.
• Northern Hygiene Laboratories (www.amneh.co.uk/). A small company based in Driffield which has provided microbiological food testing since 1990 (before SCY existed). (< 20 employees?)
• PSD (www.pesticides.gov.uk/). The Pesticide Safety Directorate is a government agency. The Agency web site states that 200 people work in York.
• Pivotal Laboratories (www.pivotal-labs.com/). A local office of a multinational company that assists pharmaceutical companieas with trials and testing. (< 20 employees? in York)
• Replizyme (www.relpizyme.com). A spin off company from the University of Leeds. Provides polymerase advice and techiques to aid drug discovery and development. (< 20 employees? in York)
• Sciantec Analytical Services (www.nrm.uk.com). A small company founded in 1990, before SCY actiites began, in Dalton and now part of another group. (<20 employees near Selby?)
• Smith and Nephew The Research Centre for this major UK company moved to York before SCY existed. It was the first company on the University Science Park. It employs a few hundred scientists and support staff.
• Tate and Lyle Citric Acid. Formerly Sturge, Tate & Lyle’s Citric Acid was an industrial facility with little research activity. It was operating from its site in Selby before SCY existed. Tate & Lyle has this closed this facility with a loss of 100 jobs.
• Xceleron. A spin off from the Biology Department at the University of York. Initially sited at DEFRA’s CSL site. Provides services based on novel analytical techniques. Works from York Science Park with a US office. Employs < 50 in York?
• Yorktest Laboratories.  A company which began developing food intolerance tests and now sells diagnostic kits. Recently subjected to a critical analysis by the Consumer’s Association. Employs < 50 in York?

Who else has analysed SCY’s success?

SEMTA Bioscience SSA Report October 2007 (www.semta.org.uk/pdf/BioSSA_Stage_1v4_October2007.pdf)

This very full analysis of the training and skills needs of the UK’s Bioscience sector provides a wealth of information about the state of the sector in the UK and provides information about the regions. Close scruting of the report reveals a number of interesting facts that challenge SCY’s rosy picture.

1. In 2004, an Ernst and Young’ European Life Sciences report identified only 328 biotech companies in the UK so SCY would have had to be remarkably effective in reporting 150 in the N Yorkshire region alone. Consequently one would expect the SEMTA report to identify York as the main centres of the UK’s bioscience activity yet it does not.

2. Using the broader definition of Bioscience and Pharmaceuticals, SEMTA identified 1,460 establishments in the UK but only 85 in the whole Yorkshire and Humber region, a region that covers a much wider area than SCY. The numbers in the SEMTA report simply do not match the data given by SCY and Science City York hardly gets a mention in the whole document.