US pharma giant Eli Lilly has warned that planning processes are an “impediment” to investing in the UK and must change if the country is to compete on the global stage.
Chief executive Dave Ricks told the BBC that he had considered developing a factory in the UK in the last decade, but backpedalled as the system would not have allowed it to build factories at speed.
Ricks said other countries that could offer a reduced timeframe of two years, as opposed to five years in the UK, to establish a pharmaceutical plant, which was “very attractive”. He added that the UK has had to compensate by relying more heavily on other incentives, such as workforce or asset delivery initiatives.
EG revealed last year that Eli Lilly’s UK business put a potential return to London on hold, citing regulatory constraints. At the time, Lilly UK considered launching a circa 65,000 sq ft incubator concept called Gateway Labs in the capital, and enlisted CBRE on its search.
Upon pausing its search for space, Eli Lilly associate vice president and head of global strategic real estate and facilities planning Stephen Lloyd Van Soelen cautioned that the UK could “squash innovation” unless its regulatory landscape changes.
Lilly UK has been headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, after exiting the capital almost 84 years ago. The firm also has a research centre in Bracknell, Berkshire.
The property industry has backed calls to improve planning policies to unlock investment. Last month, the British Property Federation flagged in its planning manifesto that investors have been deterred by “an air of uncertainty hanging over our planning system for many years now”, stemming from a lack of resources and a “seemingly constant” round of consultations and proposals for change.
The UK’s leading political parties have set out their pledges on planning laws in the run-up to this week’s general election. Labour has promised updates to the national planning policy framework to make it easier to build labs, while the Conservative Party has vowed to fast-track developments on brownfield sites.
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