The Cluster Effect: How Bicester Motion is Driving the Future of Mobility

[00:00:01] Susannah de Jager: Welcome to Oxford+. The podcast series for innovators and investors brought to you in partnership with Mishcon de Reya.

Clusters, aren't they interesting. Words spoken by Dan Geoghegan when we caught up before this interview, and they are. He's created an extraordinary world leading automobile and mobility cluster Bicester Motion. I can't wait to hear more about it. How he came up with the idea, why he came up with the idea, and the values and innovation that are driving it forward with huge potential for future growth, as well as extraordinary statistics on where they've got to since their launch in 2013.

A masterclass in the benefits of community, clustering effects, and location. I hope you enjoy this episode. Dan, thank you so much for joining today.

[00:00:48] Dan Geoghegan: Real pleasure to be here.

[00:00:49] Susannah de Jager: For those who are listening who might not have heard of Bicester Motion, give me the sort of elevator pitch. What is it?

[00:00:56] Dan Geoghegan: Well, firstly, it's a great pleasure to be here. I've been following the podcast and really enjoying the insights as to how Oxford is really capitalizing on its preeminence in the academic world. Bicester Motion really is a cluster that is focused on really creating solutions for the world in terms of mobility.

We are a community of disruptors of like minds who gather together on a single campus just outside of Oxford in Bicester, to really explore the technologies, the science, the innovations around mobility. And of course, we're in incredible times the focus on decarbonization is very acute, we have environmental issues, staring us in the face, and the world is focused, in many respects, on trying to find a way where we can all travel in a more responsible way and to create a platform for the future.

[00:01:53] Susannah de Jager: Thank you. That's very clear and I'm pleased you didn't go into too much detail cause we'll go into it all.

Give me a little bit of personal background because what I love about how this idea was fostered is that it's bringing together your childhood, your upbringing, your passions and then the knowledge you accrued in your earlier career.

So tell us a bit about how those things all came together to form the sort of vision and the idea.

[00:02:18] Dan Geoghegan: I think as we all go through life, we pick up on ideas and we remember certain things, and I've always enjoyed starting businesses and helping other people start businesses. And so the pursuit of commercial success whilst taking along with us our values and a moral compass has being something that's always interested me.

I grew up in the countryside. My father had a countryside garage and 30, 40 years ago, all of these small businesses were community assets and we learned, unknowingly, that bringing people along with us and being part of a community, supporting each other, being there in the good times and the bad times, and really working together as a small community was just a way of life. And so to be able to take that forward in the modern world to create a community, a cluster, of like-minded individuals who all want to achieve something where we have aligned vision has been a real pleasure and an opportunity for me.

So I was fortunate enough to go to a great school. I went on to university. I was the first person in my family to do so. I studied law at Reading and through the family business met and some very interesting people, and I found myself with an opportunity to work in a private investment company focused on venture capital in Europe and the emerging markets, also the US, and so, from, I guess a, an interesting beginning where we were in a sort of small business, family business, I found myself with the opportunity to travel widely after university, have some credentials under my arm and had the opportunity to work in New York, in Amsterdam, in the emerging markets Eastern Europe at a very early age. And I came back and did an MBA at Warwick Business School to consolidate all of that.

But picking up ideas as we all do through life. I remembered a few things.

One, from my experience, as an intern in New York, which was that consolidation is an opportunity for business excellence, for value creation, and the expression, I guess many of us have heard of the sort of the mom and pop store scenario where as owners of small businesses get older or they want to do something else, then somebody else can come along and wrap them all together and I thought that there were synergies in that.

I also was involved in the corporate finance business, about 15 years ago. I set up a small corporate finance house, a boutique where we were helping companies structure their businesses and raise capital mostly for property. And somebody happened to mention that they were so impressed that clusters and business parks, branded business parks did really well. And I started to think about that and I thought, of course, well, if you've got like minds next to each other, complimentary businesses, it makes them more efficient and they have critical mass. They've got synergies which they can benefit from. The customers are happier because they only have to go to one place, not five places, and the voice is louder. And of course from a property owning a commercial property perspective, your churn is lower, people are happier where they are, they're doing more business so they can afford to pay a bit more rent, you can provide more services to look after them.

There was a combination of structural opportunities around the fragmentation of the, at that time, we were focused on the historic car world, along with the shift in the customer base from perhaps people who looked after their own vehicles to those who wanted more of an experience, something more leisure focused, that I felt that we had an opportunity to bring it all together. Rather like having a boat. If you have a boat, you don't take it home, you leave it in a nice marina with all the skills, you go to a marina you'd like where the family are happy to go to. It's inclusive and it has its own community feel, and I wanted to create that for the historic car world, which sounded, it to some whimsical, but actually having had the background I had in private investment and corporate finance and so on, I did the desktop analysis and turned out to be a really big industry.

So the historic car world, 10, 12 years ago was reckoned to be about 4 billion pounds a year. Employing 40, 50, 60,000 people depending on the statistics you follow. And it had no focal point, it had no center, and so the opportunity to create a center of excellence, where it had never been done before, particularly in the center of the country, was something that proved irresistible.

[00:06:54] Susannah de Jager: It's kind of crazy, like so many good ideas, when somebody says it and does the desktop work, you're like, how is it possible that somebody hadn't seen this before? But you did and you had the background and it's almost like your background was made for this opportunity when you describe it.

So you had the idea, you knew you were right. How did you actually put it into action? What were the sort of five first steps that you took? Because I think it's interesting for people considering these things to go from big picture to specifics.

[00:07:24] Dan Geoghegan: Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, you've just said you, you knew you were right and that is something I felt whenever I've started a business thatyou kind of know it's right. It's there to be done and maybe that intuition is born of experience. But it's quite an important thing.

So...

[00:07:40] Susannah de Jager: Did peoples tell you you were wrong at all? Out of interest, did you get naysayers sort of saying, well, that's pretty risky, Dan.

[00:07:47] Dan Geoghegan: Yeah, I mean at the time I think I remember somebody saying it was a bold vision. Which would need a lot of determination and commitment. 10 years later I met them and I said, I remember your comments. He said, yeah, what I'm trying to say is that you were an idiot or a lunatic or this was crazy.

But he was being very diplomatic at the time, so it was only sort of looking back, I realized that those from the outside looking in thought it was, let's say bold.

[00:08:12] Susannah de Jager: Those are the same people that will never do it themselves, and so if you are somebody propelled towards something, it's an interesting thing, you need to be able to take advice, take inputs, and at the same time, filter for personality differences and risk appetite.

[00:08:26] Dan Geoghegan: Yeah, I think, it's probably because it hasn't been done before. But if it's been done before, then you're no longer the first mover.

[00:08:31] Susannah de Jager: Yeah.

[00:08:31] Dan Geoghegan: If you're the first mover, then the spoils to the victor. You have the opportunity to make your way on the path the least trodden. Following other people doing what they've done before, of course is lower risk, but it's lower return, and in my case, lower satisfaction. Being able to determine a course to disrupt, to do it differently, to not have to refer to the instruction manual, is the basis on which I think entrepreneurs operate. Is to think it up themselves and go and do it because they know they're right.

[00:09:05] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, fly the plane as you build it.

[00:09:07] Dan Geoghegan: You've asked a question about the first five things, and I kind of liken it to, perhaps a chef who wants his own restaurant. To all of those in the restaurant, you have to have a certain demeanor, interaction, style, to look after the customer base, your target market. Behind the scenes in the kitchen, professional, perhaps quiet determines, considered, methodical, systematic, and that is very much the case for us.

That of course the industry around automotive is filled with people who have passion, and that is something I say when people visit us who are perhaps looking for business accommodation is we have the business accommodation. You can take that for granted. We're in a great place. This is a historical site. We have an An incredible community of 54 businesses. However, you also get us, you know, we as a landlord, don't talk in those terms of you're a tenant, we own the property. We talk in terms of partnership. And that's really key to the success of Bicester Motion is that we are as excited about what's happening at Bicester Motion as those who are occupying and have those skills and visions of their own.

So the five things that we did first. I think the word I use mostly in those initial months were systematic. So getting the assessments of what have we bought. We had acquired a site of several hundred acres from the MOD. But we needed to do our own assessments, health and safety, look at the conditions of the buildings, get the surveys done, so understanding what was on our plate.

The next component was really starting life there and for me, being there all the time, really important. It's not something that can be done remotely. We've bought a derelict historic national asset. It needed 24 7 thought and presence. So being there, being on site, boots on, every day. Ensuring we had the best team that we could find to start that business. We were a startup, but finding those who shared the passion where we could, I would say job share, but everybody was doing everything to just get things done. The starting life on site component, the first thing I did was find the best building and set up a car storage business, called Historit. We had a perfectly good hangar, which was over an acre of covered space and used for storing a squadron of airplanes in the Second World War. So just getting some life on site, getting the pulse, I guess the blood flowing on site meant that people coming in and out.

Finally we wanted to change the perception of a former Ministry of Defense site that was for almost a hundred years behind closed doors. It was a fence with barbed wire around it and so we started an open day in those early years called the Sunday Scramble. We threw open the gates and for the first time in a hundred years, we invited the public in to see what we were doing and I think there was great interest. People had been driving past the gates to RAF Bicester for many years. Almost to the point where they stopped noticing it, and so when we arrived, and there was a lot of concern and speculation about what we were trying to achieve and what we might want to do with the site. For example, knock it down or build houses. But we decided to take the long term view, which is bring people along on the journey and acknowledge that it was a local and national asset, which people wanted to be part of. Either because it was part of the Oxfordshire story or actually, in terms of the way we were going to renovate the buildings and bring it back to life, it was going to be a part of the economic pulse of Oxfordshire and indeed UK PLC ultimately.

So, putting one step in front of the other is really important and making sure that we've done our homework, we've brought people along with us, and really operated in a responsible, methodical way was the key to unlocking where we are today.

[00:13:36] Susannah de Jager: It's really interesting. I like getting the smaller picture. I think it's really sometimes so abstract to people to know what actually happens because they're looking at the end state rather than the steps between here and there.

But what's interesting to me as you talk, is that there are threads that come through that are clearly very important to you. You know, values, community, you spoke about kind of turning a private space there into a public space and that sense of how important it's to bring the wider community, not just the community inside with you on that journey, and these things are relatively well perceived now, I think, I hope. I think there are lots of places that historically have been quite isolated, insular, that are increasingly opening up. The university when they build spaces now they make sure it's more public space oriented. Oxford North, as we were discussing, is launching this afternoon. They also have a big focus on public space.

But was that something that you just intuited or was that something that your MBA had spoken about explicitly? I'm just intrigued as to how much of that was just your own instincts that that was important.

[00:14:41] Dan Geoghegan: It's entirely intuitive. I think that, you know, we're humans, and we can talk about business to business and business to consume. But actually we're people to people and from my early years, being part of a family business, it was just absolutely normal for us to be operating in a cohesive but collaborative way with everybody around us.

And so we wanted to show that we could affect a change for all stakeholders. At one end, people concerned about Britain's last remaining intact pre-war bomber station, albeit derelict, at a time when the anniversary of bomber command was being celebrated with Memorial at...

[00:15:22] Susannah de Jager: I used to walk past it every day.

[00:15:23] Dan Geoghegan: at Hyde Park Corner.

Yeah, astonishing recognition.

So it was intuitive. We wanted to open the doors. We felt that inclusive was the new exclusive. Bringing people in was really part of the pride, pleasure, and responsibility that we felt and we had nothing to hide.

[00:15:44] Susannah de Jager: Why wouldn't you?

[00:15:44] Dan Geoghegan: Why wouldn't you? We've got a beautiful site, 400 acres on the edge of Bicester and we had a long-term view and vision for it, and I think it surprised a lot of people, when we said, well, you know, come on in, we'd love to show you round. It seems to be part of the real estate playbook now, you know, buy a site, do the consultations, hand out the free carrier bags and so on.

But 15 years ago, when I first saw the site, that may or may not have been the way it was done.

[00:16:17] Susannah de Jager: I don't think it was commonplace.

[00:16:18] Dan Geoghegan: And bear in mind, I don't come from a commercial property background, a development background. So I was discovering all of this for the first time and I think that was a real benefit to come at it.

I sometimes think, you know, we were so direct and so upfront that the naysayers didn't see us coming in a way.

[00:16:37] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, people can't really react against if you're just so straight, you know, they're sort of really no, no ulterior motive? You're like, no, no, really, everything is up frontI, like you, can only really play a straight bat. So I recognize that. But I really like that that was such a focus from the beginning and just coming back to some of the other forces of community and you touched upon some of the benefits of clustering and actually it's kind of interesting for me to hear you talk about village. Because I just interviewed Professor Robin Dunbar and we were speaking about these thresholds, how you keep community, how you keep commitment, therefore integration of companies, in this case a wider community, as it scales.

You talked about the benefits of clustering. But how are you sort of, as you grow, how are you mitigating any loss of those benefits, right? That can happen as you become more numerous.

[00:17:29] Dan Geoghegan: It's a really interesting question. So we have a community in historic buildings, numbering 54. 54 businesses brand new to Bicester. 50 of them are brand new to Oxfordshire. They now range from historic skills such as upholstery and metal bending, and engineering through to e-fuels, biofuels, electric motors, different propulsion systems. So it really has come into its own as what is now the world's largest automotive cluster. But bear in mind, we're only on 5% of the site. That's just on 20 acres. Beautiful buildings, 300 trees, a great place to work. But we have an opportunity to do what the RAF were trying to do in 1926 when the site, as you see it now, was completed and that was to be at the forefront of technology. To be challenging the world in terms of engineering and that DNA is something that we still are proud of, and I think the site was designed for that. But our job, our challenge to ourselves is to ensure that whilst we're only on 20 acres, that as we grow into the rest of the site, that we don't lose any of that cohesion. That it always feels like Bicester Motion. That it always feels part of something bigger wherever you are on site.

So 15 years ago expressions like placemaking and place shaping were in their infancy. But for us, in terms of our value set, there are easier ways to do what we're doing and that is to be generic and to ignore some elements of what makes the place special in the interests of speed and growth.

But we are long-term owners of the site. We're interested in creating that sense of place and do you know what? It's actually good for business. It's good for investment. It's good for returns. The shareholders are happier. Ultimately, we are all doing better because our attrition in terms of occupancy is very low. We have average 98% occupancy since we started in every phase. They stand there today. We've got 40 buildings, we've got one vacancy. It's a thousand square feet, it's tiny. So it's great for business. People want to be part of our site.

We are unusual in this world where we don't have trouble filling our units. I mean, our commercial property portfolio is doing really well. During COVID, we had a hundred percent rental income. People wanted to be there. They wanted to support what we were doing, and it has net benefits to our shareholders to be part of something that isn't generic. That is a unique asset and has its own vision and mission in a fast moving world and I think that all of the businesses that are on site. We've had around 400 inquiries for 50 units. Some of them are quite big. I mean, we've just completed our largest build, 88,000 square feet. That's two acres of floor space for Yasa which is an Oxford University spin out, owned now by Mercedes-Benz.

That's a landmark building. I walked past it this morning, as we and the team did our morning walk around the airfieldand it's an iconic, beautiful building. But it's adding to the texture and shape of Bicester Motion on what was originallybare flat land. And I think that's a cue we take from the architects of the 1920s that they took a blank piece of paper and, even though there aren't hills and there aren't streams, it had been imbued through design, through architecture, with a sense of place and a sense of mission.

You would walk through the gates of RAF Bicester in 1926, see straight up onto the airfield, and see these buildings, and on the right hand side, well with the station commander and on the left hand side was the guard rooms. If you got into trouble that's where you would end up. You saw the top and bottom of things from the moment you walked through the gate. But with the aspiration that if you walked forward, you could become an aviator.

[00:21:53] Susannah de Jager: So there was a landscape to it. There was a landscape that was created on a blank canvas.

[00:21:58] Dan Geoghegan: It felt very much that you were part of something thoughtful and of human scale and I would imagine that it was very exciting to visit it, as it is today.

[00:22:09] Susannah de Jager: I want to go into some of the specifics of the companies, but just before we move on to that, what is your shareholder base?

How is it made up? How has it evolved? How do you see it potentially evolving while maintaining the values and the alignment that you spoke about just there.

[00:22:23] Dan Geoghegan: So during my career, for I guess the best part of 20, 25 years, I was working with in private investment, corporate finance, and the importance of having a shareholder base that had alignment was very important. Ensuring that the structure was simple. That we all had the same share class.That we were all in it together. We, as a management team, would provide the intellectual capital, the vision, the drive, the unstinting forward movement. The capital base would be just that. It would be empowering management to deliver that vision and so we all played our role. For a project like this having trust, that they trust me, and the management team. That they're patient. Property is, you know, is not a a quick game if you want to do it properly, and actually the returns work out best over time and there are ups and downs and creating value in a very methodical way over time is very rewarding. It's not to say there isn't liquidity, but being patient,was really important.

And so we, I brought together a group of supportive, experienced, private investors. One of whom is my first boss in venture capital, and still sits on, on the board. Through to other key investors who understood what we were trying to achieve and appreciated that at one end, having several hundred acres of prime Oxfordshire, was not a bad defensive position to be in. But we could add value to it over time and also do some good. We could change a bit of the world, the way it operated, add something to to Bicester. 10, 12 years ago, we didn't know about the Oxford Growth Commission and the Oxford Cambridge growth corridors. We knew about Bicester Village and our proximity on the M40 and the two junctions we have and the two railway stations and the central location of Bicester. So that wasn't a bad place to start. But it was down to us to make something of it.

[00:24:40] Susannah de Jager: Hmm.

[00:24:41] Dan Geoghegan: Something special.

[00:24:42] Susannah de Jager: And it's interesting, before we started recording, you and I were touching upon politics and clearly you're talking about the values that drive some of the sustainable mobility decarbonization and those things are still very important to lots of people. But clearly the geopolitical climate has changed that and I was speaking to somebody the other day that's very subject to the pressure from activist investors in America, and therefore, I imagine that the shareholder base you have is even more important for maintaining the values that you clearly hold dear.

[00:25:16] Dan Geoghegan: We're very fortunate that ever since we started the business in 2013, we have the same shareholder base. So they're clearly happy. They're clearly supportive. We also appreciate that having a long-term capital partner, who can unlock the full potential of the site is, a very important future step for us. We are mindful that whilst we have brought a lot of enterprise to Bicester a lot of jobs, there will be, there'll be a thousand people, employed at Bicester Motion next year. The combined turnover of the businesses are over a billion. We've got three New York listed businesses alongside those original artisans. So with that, we must also not shy away from the challenge and opportunity to build on that and to rest on our laurels. We've gotta keep moving. We've got to be dynamic. We won't do things for the sake of doing them, but there is scale, and speed, and now a global voice for the science innovation technology around mobility, past, present, and future.

So that is a challenge and an opportunity which will require a thoughtful capital partner for the future, because we are an order of magnitude in terms of the future potential compared with where we are today.

[00:26:47] Susannah de Jager: And just to put that in numbers. You've already said you're on 20 acres. The site itself is 444 acres. So the potential for growth is vast. You've got 54 companies, which I think has even grown since we last spoke. You've got three New York listed companies, as you said.

Take us through some of those companies at the moment. Because I think it gives an idea of where that growth might come from to people that perhaps don't know, the breadth, quite frankly, of what you have on site currently.

[00:27:18] Dan Geoghegan: It's always an excitement when somebody visits us because seeing is believing.

When you have an idea and you relentlessly story tell about it, and in those early years people say, what are you doing?

I start explaining about this industry and, but actually I boiled it down to one thing, which was we're creating a business park for mobility businesses. Keeps it simple and it creates a baseline and it tells people what we're doing in a very simple way.

They can discover about community and innovation later but it made a lot easier. The range of businesses is, to us, thrilling. At one end of the scale, we have historic businesses at the other end futureneering businesses. We have motorsport, we have, scientists in white coats walking around. Not quite, you know, penning formula on backs of envelopes, but you get a feel of that.

We find ourselves in this incredible location. Which as well as being part of the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London from an academic point of view, and all of the transport nodes, which are the envy of probably much of the UK.

We also are in Motorsport Valley. 90% of the Formula One teams are within half an hour of us. The first Formula One team ever, Layton House, was founded and located in Bicester. We have just welcomed back to Bicester, a Formula One team, Sauber, the Audi Formula One project and so here we are, 12 years later, 13 years later, unlocking a whole new market. Or in fact reintroducing a whole new market of motorsport and one of the key players in that, one of the teams for their first UK presence and it's with us. It's in Bicester, it's at Bicester Motion. This followed the arrival, five years ago, of the governing body of Motorsport UK who have 70,000 license holders. They are the regulator for the industry, but they also appreciated, that there was an opportunity to locate themselves in the center of Motorsport Valley, and put themselves at the heart of an industry, which is, I think on recent research from the Motorsport Industry Association, the MIA, worth 14 or 15 billion pounds to the UK economy. Employs a hundred thousand people. The impact of the industry it runs into thousands of companies. The skills are incredible.

It's the only place in the world where it can happen. It is the only place in the world where it does happen, this collaborative approach. So for us, it's a real pleasure to see that excitement and we see those businesses, they might be involved in historic racing. So we have an incredible business Kingsbury Racing that runs pre 1931 Bentleys. Races them, rallies them for their customers, and supports that industry. Right through to the governing body. And now Sauber, the Audi Formula One project are sharing, I could say they're on our doorstep, they're sharing our doorstep.These strands are really important. We look around the site, from that Formula One origin. The founder of Zero, it's a business run by Paddy Lowe. He was at Mercedes Formula One, and his mission is to unlock a fuel that doesn't add carbon to the world. So a net zero fuel and when we met Paddy five years ago, he said, listen, I want to be here. Aviation is a nut crack in terms of fuel as well. If you can fuel a 737 in a different way, then you are making a real impact.

He had a clear mission.

I went to see the business last week and they have 40 scientists. They are making aviation fuel and they can make petrol and diesel, it goes straight into the vehicle without any modification and so now their challenge is to scale that, and that was born at Bicester Motion. We had a startup five years ago, PhysicsX, another Formula One engineer, Robin Tuluie, and he was focused on suspension systems and innovation in motorsport. But I remember him saying, do you wanna come to a meeting? And I walked into a meeting and there was Europe's leading cardiologist, and in his hand was something half the size of an egg and Robin says well I've just invented a heart pump that post heart attack can be inserted and charged with a pad to replace the broken heart muscles.

I walked through at a different time and there was a 3D printed metal sculpture, it looked like to me, and Robin had a customer who happened to be in the rocket business and the air modulation system around the rocket was causing a slight vibration. And he invented a new modulation system in this littlecommercial unit at Bicester Motion. He has since gone on to develop an AI solution for engineering. Five years ago, he was a one man band, asking if we would waive the fee for hiring the boardroom because he was a startup. A few months ago he raised $150 million. From small acorns, large oaks grow, as he says to us. So it's fascinating to watch the trajectory of some of these businesses.

Yasa is a great example. It's an Oxford University spin out. It is now owned by Mercedes-Benz. It has designed a new type of electric motor, which is a third the weight of a Tesla motor, but four times the power. That will be going into its C class Mercedes, which is one of the highest selling models next year with a 497 mile range.

But we go into every doorway and this is the joy of curation because all of the businesses are trying to approach the modern world, the future in a way that creates improvement. To see the impact of all of these businesses in their sectors, in their verticals is a real thrill, and I think as a community, we take a lot of pride in that.

When we look at UK PLC and the impact we can have together it creates a voice. It creates those synergies and we continue to look out for businesses that can make a difference to join our community as we build out our own business plan to create a long-term meaningful commercial property asset. Which in some ways takes a almost a retail view of property. So that it is livable, enjoyable, accessible, inclusive...

[00:34:21] Susannah de Jager: Better parking than Bicester Village.

[00:34:23] Dan Geoghegan: And a pleasure to be. To ensure that we make the most of our time on Earth.

[00:34:31] Susannah de Jager: So we spoke at the beginning of the interview about your vision for what you were gonna create. If you were to articulate what it is now and how you want it to be characterized. Is that the same or has it shifted?

[00:34:44] Dan Geoghegan: The advantage of coming on a journey as we have done with Bicester Motion is that we can demonstrate our ability to deliver, our flexibility, our dynamic view on life to really take advantage of the opportunity that we see in the world. But really to create those foundations for future growth and I think more so in than ever in the modern world things change so quickly that we're very proud that we've created a dynamic team who are up for the challenge to operate passionatelyin a determined way to create something different that is fit for purpose and has sustainability around it.

[00:35:33] Susannah de Jager: Sustainability's got a interesting thing. Because at the moment it's this word that has different meanings to people. But sustainability is both values led, if that's what you want it to be, and it's requirement led as we know the demands, it's not one or the other.

It's going to beand whether it's renewable sources of fuels or how you travel. You know, I saw somebody the other day making an argument for more nuclear, he was being very dogmatic about it, and he got spectacularly shot down in a group of real experts. This was a, an event in Oxford because people just said, you can't just have more. They wouldn't still be enough. It needs to be everything. And I think that's quite a reassuring mission statement in the world where we do have people who don't believe that climate change is an issue. That it doesn't actually preclude the necessity of sustainable options.

[00:36:27] Dan Geoghegan: It's interesting what you say around sustainability, and it means different things to different people. From our point of view, these are things we would do anyway. We have put into use 19 listed a hundred year old buildings. We are reusing, repurposing, in a scheme of regeneration that is bringing those buildings back into sustainable use from an economic perspective.

The best way to preserve them is to make them relevant. We had a, an interesting discussion not so long ago around ESG and we had an external consultant saying, well, in this modern world, these are things you should be doing, and so we explained what we were doing in our community outreach and, you know, the Bicester Tri Club using our track and the cheerleaders using the hangar for practice and the Bicester Operatic Society using a hangar when they couldn't find a facility some years ago, and what we were doing with COVID vaccinations. But for us, that was just the way we roll. That's what we do. Of course you would do that. You've got the space. Why wouldn't you want people coming in? And for us, it wasn't cynical. Let's score some points on the ESG scale. and that was the response we got from the consultant. You're doing it anyway.

[00:37:45] Susannah de Jager: And to your earlier point, it's beneficial to the business. It's not at a cost, even if it might seem to be, incrementally a tiny one at the time. It's so part of the fabric of goodwill of how you then go through planning consultations and bring people with you and that's all fostering good outcomes for the master plan.

[00:38:07] Dan Geoghegan: Yeah, I think there is a checklist there. I don't think we use it in the sense that for us it's authentic.

We have 150,000 visitors to our events every year. Some of those events we run the Sunday scrambles, others are run by third parties who want to do something special in a special accessible place. So that discussion around sustainability, I think comes from the core for us. And I was intrigued, one of the podcasts that Oxford Plus have put out with David Mott, talking about, you know, the importance of the founder, in our case, the founding team. That our core vision, our core values, are still with us. We act the way we talk. Which is to try and do the right thing. We make mistakes, but they're honestly made. we try and rectify as quickly as we can, and when we look at the opportunity to create more on site. It's not out of a build because we can. It's how do we make this work for the long term? How do we consider the environmental impacts? How do we consider the sustainable componentry around renewable energy?

For example, our new buildings in the next phase, 80% of the roof is south facing. So that's, they're readily adaptable to solar energy, for example. Already we use a hundred percent renewable energy throughout the site.So we opt for that. It's more expensive but we feel it's the right thing to do. We are growing our own oak trees from acorns we've picked up. One of our colleagues was very keen to to do it on site. So this is something we're pursuing and I think there is a sense of pride and passion around the location.

I think there's one area where we ought to touch upon and that is looking at the Oxford story and we're delighted that the government have reinvigorated the discussion and strategy around the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor. And I think the infrastructure that we're seeing with East West Rail and the focus of the Oxford Growth Commission around power infrastructure, road infrastructure, rail. Looking at Oxford Station and how that works in the public realm and creating the conditions for growth. I mean, we're very lucky that, if we look at Oxford to Cambridge, that we are at Bicester Motion the first port of call out of Oxford. We are 12 minutes on rail, and so I found this morning, 20 minutes to Wheatley from Bicester. So, we have an enormous opportunity to contribute to that science, innovation, technology story and to play our role on the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor, and that is something that we're able to demonstrate a decade long track record of delivering something that perhaps there were those who thought it might not happen or could not happen or would not happen. We're very much looking forward to playing our role going forward.

[00:41:16] Susannah de Jager: Well, Dan, thank you. I really look forward to seeing how it all evolves. I think what you've created is really amazing and for all of the reasons you've outlined. I hope it continues to grow and play a huge part in the Oxford ecosystem.

[00:41:32] Dan Geoghegan: Thank you very much.

[00:41:34] Susannah de Jager: Thanks for listening to this episode of Oxford+, presented by me, Susannah de Jager. If you want to stay up to date with all things Oxford+, please visit our website, oxfordplus.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an update. Oxford+ was made in partnership with Mishcon de Reya and is produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four.