Tower Hamlets given go-ahead for life science district

Above: view to the the Royal London Hospital from Tower Hamlets Hall, showing part of the land earmarked for the new life sciences cluster

Tower Hamlets has approved plans for a new world class life sciences cluster to be built in Whitechapel.

A number of vacant buildings and plots next to the Royal London Hospital will be redeveloped and brought back into use.

Five buildings will be constructed, and one existing building will be retained, creating nearly 70,000 sqm of floor space for life sciences use.

The redevelopment will also include a spaces that can be used by the community and local schools to promote career opportunities in life sciences, as well as a café, public toilets and landscaped open space.

Life science is the study of living organisms, including a wide range of disciplines like biology, genetics, cell biology and neurobiology.

The development is part of the on-going regeneration of Whitechapel and is expected to create employment and training opportunities and the potential for up to 4,180 full-time jobs.

Lutfur Rahman, Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said: “This is a boost for Whitechapel and the latest in a series of developments in the area that is putting Whitechapel on the map as a go-to area of London.

“The development will benefit local people now, with the creation of jobs opportunities, but it will also be a boost for the future.

“If our young people can see a world-class facility on their doorstep, it will help inspire our next generation of scientific talent.”

Members of the Strategic Development Committee approved the application at a meeting last week (Wednesday 9 October).

Several planning conditions were set out, including that the site will provide space for education and health activities and an outreach programme for local schools and colleges.

Financial contributions totalling £6.9 million have also been agreed, including £2.5m towards community health and wellbeing projects and programmes and £1.7m towards employment skills and training initiatives.

In addition to the built development, there will be improvements to the streets around the site to make them more pedestrian and cycle friendly. This includes widening footways, tree planting and a new public square between the hospital and St. Augustine with St. Philip’s Church.

The application will now be referred to the Mayor of London before a final decision is issued.

The proposed development was discussed at Future Cities Forum's 'Knowledge Cities' that took place last November at the former 18th century Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, now sensitively converted to Tower Hamlets Town Hall.

The first part of the discussion asked questions on how the design of the new life sciences district in Whitechapel will ensure quality of place and opportunities for STEM education for young people. Barts Life Sciences has a vision - based on the adjacent location of the Royal London Hospital and the Queen Mary Biosciences Innovation Centre - to transform the future of healthcare, not only for the people of London and the UK, but globally.

Its ultimate ambition is to build a new life sciences campus that will provide a space for researchers, scientists, and clinicians to work directly alongside businesses and entrepreneurs, creating the healthcare solutions of tomorrow. This will allow Barts Life Sciences to share ground-breaking ideas, develop new ways of working, improve health outcomes, and reduce the costs faced by health systems.

Grant Bourhill, Managing Director of Barts Life Sciences, explained the vision:

'Our aim is to develop one of the largest life science clusters in the UK and we want to drive health outcomes, economic prosperity and turbo charge educational aspiration and performance. This is an area of economic disparity and poverty with children born underweight but within their childhood experiencing obesity. If we can create more jobs across healthcare here we can help the community. Each of the proposed five clusters will help different areas of the community and this is a place where people have five times the rates of diabetes than elsewhere and it follows then that we are also looking at the problems of heart disease.'

Grant was asked what the unique selling point for the life science district considering it will be competing against other hubs in the UK and around the world:

'I tend to answer that by looking at what is really unique here. We are the second largest health trust in the UK, Barts runs the largest number of commercial clinical trials anywhere in the NHS and we have the connection with QMUL with 30,000 students and specialisms in data science. We are based in the middle of a very diverse community, probably the most ethnically diverse in London. We have a partnership with the private sector which will provide some compelling infrastructure. The opportunity lies in the collaboration of these adjacent organisations, adding an industrial base and it is the density here that makes the place special.'