Insider Media Limited

The Midlands' new local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) risk replicating mistakes made by their regional development agency (RDA) forbearers in creating too many science and technology parks, a group of experts drawn together by Insider has heard.

A special round table gathered to discuss the future of science parks heard that regional development agencies such as Advantage West Midlands and Emda had too often pushed the establishment of parks despite the lack of viable clusters to sustain them.

They were concerned that LEPs were in danger of making those same mistakes again.

"The RDAs' focus was on creating employment but they didn't think through how science parks might work, and often they didn't because the demographics and skills sets weren't right," said Carl Potter, partner at agency GVA. "You cannot create a cluster where there's nothing to cluster around."

David Hardman, managing director Birmingham Science Park Aston, agreed.

"Often science parks, particularly those set in the middle of nowhere by the nine RDAs, are just real estate deals," he added.

"They're no different from any other business park except they're expensive and don't work. Now we've 21 LEPs and the same thing's happening again - there are now more centres for games industries than there are games companies."

The round table also questioned the links between Midland science parks and nearby universities, claming that technology spin-outs from higher education were now far too rare.

"I can't recall a proper spin-out in the last few years, which makes me wonder if there's a massive conflict of interest in universities working with science and technology parks," said Tim Ashton, senior associate at intellectual property specialists Forresters. "Universities are hanging onto technology much more than they used to, and the income that goes with it."

"We've found ourselves against universities," added Craig Satchwell, director at property consultancy Colliers. "Instead of spinning out intellectual property into start-ups many try to retain it as a form of income."

A full report of the discussion will be published in the February edition of Midlands Business Insider.