Cardiff University has joined other leading Russell Group universities in calling on the UK Government to harness the jobs, skills and investment universities bring to the community as they look to recover from Covid-19.
The Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University believes the track record of universities in attracting investment, creating new jobs and providing local employers with skilled workers means they have the experience and capability to drive a rapid recovery as Wales looks to bounce back from Covid.
As a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, Cardiff is among the UK’s top higher education institutions and brings a range of benefits to the local area. Research-intensive universities in Wales have been at the heart of innovation clusters based around emerging technologies, bringing high-skilled jobs and investment to the area.
Between 2014 and 2020, more than 3,600 new jobs were created by spinouts linked to Cardiff University. Those 1,277 active companies had a combined turnover of £181m and brought £54m of investment to Wales.
In addition to the high value jobs created by their business spin-out activities, Cardiff University currently employs 6,900 staff, an increase of 4.2% over the last 5 years.
As the Government looks ahead to its Comprehensive Spending Review in the Autumn, the Russell Group is calling on it to boost funding to nurture existing and scale-up developing regional innovation clusters that bring together research-intensive organisations, highly skilled researchers and academics, businesses of all sizes, and other key local players to exploit regional pockets of research and innovation excellence.
The group has also proposed a series of other measures, many of which are low cost, to supercharge university-business collaboration, boost local economies and create job, including tweaks to taxation facing businesses engaging in collaborative R&D, as well as the tax faced by universities when building new facilities which will be used for research collaborations with businesses.
Cardiff University President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Colin Riordan, said:
“As universities, we have a responsibility to our communities: our impact does not stop at the door of the lecture hall or the campus boundary.
“We are proud of our record on creating jobs and drawing investment into Wales. Our ambition is bold. We are building an Innovation Campus in the heart of Cardiff to help us work with collaborators and the wider community to generate greater prosperity. We know the UK Government has a challenging economic task ahead when every pound of public money spent must be carefully balanced.
“However by expanding schemes that have a proven track record of success, tweaking VAT rules and backing our universities, we believe the Government will see a huge return on investment and make a real difference to the lives of people in Wales.
An example of how research-intensive universities like Cardiff can turn ideas into projects that deliver real life impacts is the development of sbarc | spark. The centre, set to open this winter on the university’s new Innovation Campus, will provide a base for spinouts, startups and social science research. Packed with ideation spaces, labs and offices, it will help our public, private and third sector partners test and trial new ideas. An industry-focused Translational Research Hub to develop the sciences of catalysis and compound semiconductors will open next door in 2022.
Dr Tim Bradshaw, Chief Executive of the Russell Group, said
“By supporting innovation clusters around emerging technologies that have huge commercial potential and/or the ability to tackle some of the key issues facing UK and the world, the UK Government can help to unlock the potential of the UK’s regions and nations.”
