2 minute read - 8th September 2023
£5.5m funding for Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre
The government has announced £5.5m of funding to establish a Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence, boosting the UK’s ability to respond to future health emergencies and helping sustain and grow the 280,000-strong UK life sciences workforce.
This £5.5m grant funding forms part of the chancellor’s £650m ‘Life Sci for Growth’ package announced in May. A competition to allocate funding, led by Innovate UK, will officially open on 26th September.
The centre will build on existing infrastructure and best practice, and deliver sustainable, end-to-end training provision, all of which the industry needs to continue growing. Establishing the centre will support two crucial elements of the UK Science and Technology Framework: the government’s strategic plan to deliver better health and greater prosperity through the opportunities that science, innovation and technology present.
The government has announced £5.5m of funding to establish a Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence, boosting the UK’s ability to respond to future health emergencies / Picture: Getty/iStock
The centre will support building a skilled workforce with support from an agile and responsive skills system and retaining the world’s best science and technology talent in the UK.
George Freeman MP, minister of state for science, innovation and technology, said: “From breakthroughs in genomic medicine to agile new approaches and disease diagnostics, the £94 billion life science sector is central to our ambitions for the economy, as well as playing a fundamental role in our health. But it is only possible for the sector to stay at the front of an accelerating global race if they have a world-class workforce at their disposal.
“We already have a formidable skills base, and as home to four of the world’s top 10 universities, the infrastructure to keep growing it. The Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence will help ensure that we add to the more than 280,000 high-skilled jobs the life sciences sector already delivers right across the UK.”
The grant competition will launch on 26 September. The recipient of grant competition funding for the Medicines Manufacturing Centre of Excellence will be awarded by Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, as part of their Transforming Medicines Manufacturing Programme. Innovate UK supports business-led innovation in all sectors, technologies, and in every region of the UK.