Philip Campbell has no doubt about what makes Milton Park a business park with a difference.

The park's commercial director said: "This is a unique place and that’s because it’s under single ownership. If you look at real estate assets across Oxfordshire and across the country, you won’t see any like Milton Park that are held in single ownership.

“You may see big estates but you will find that they are all held in fragmented ownership. Single ownership enables you to create a place and a community.

“It also enables us to do things like provide the amenities, so we have the shops, the restaurant, gym and crèche, and bring in the Wandering Feast for people to come out and eat at lunchtimes. That single ownership is what really underpins this whole place.”

Mr Campbell added: “We have a huge range of businesses here and strong occupier retention rates, with people coming here and staying - and a big part of that is creating that community and creating a place where people want to come and work.

“The single ownership means we can work with companies to accommodate their growth, which can be difficult in a fragmented site.”

Milton Park’s location alongside the A34 and with Didcot Parkway railway station just minutes away, and Oxford’s universities nearby, also provide strong selling points.

Mr Campbell said: “Strategically we’re in a very good place location-wise. I think as a county Oxfordshire has many great strengths and for many years has been rather reserved about this – rather backward in coming forward.

“But the tide is turning and the Local Enterprise Partnership is making good progress promoting Oxfordshire. There’s certainly a recognition in the Government of the great strengths of Oxfordshire and we’ve seen that with the Enterprise Zone status for this area, the allocation of Didcot as a Garden Town. All those things ultimately help bring money into the area to improve the infrastructure and improve the place for people who live and work here, so I think there are a lot of positives.

“We’re very much part of an ecosystem and it’s important that the ecosystem is connected up and coherent. I think the Didcot Garden Town proposals offer a real window of opportunity to create a really coherent plan for the area.”

Milton Park also enjoys another advantage that allows it to respond fast to the needs of existing tenants and businesses looking for a new base

Mr Campbell said: “We have a Local Development Order, which is a simplified planning regime across the whole of Milton Park and enables planning consent to be granted for what’s required when it’s required - within certain parameters - very quickly.

“If you simplify planning rules, then you can make it easier to create jobs and growth, because companies, particularly global companies, will be looking at locations not just in the UK but across the globe and they may have a timeline for a decision. If the UK planning system doesn’t allow that timeline to be met, then we’re off the list.”

He added: “The biggest growth area at Milton Park is the science and technology sector and within that there’s a particularly strong life sciences element. My prediction is that sector will continue to grow.

“We have a number of Oxford University spinouts and some of those are now among the largest companies at Milton Park. They’ve grown over time to become some very significant Oxfordshire players.

“Oxford University Innovation span out the largest number of companies last year compared with any other technology transfer agency in Europe, 24 or 25. There’s also Oxford Sciences Innovation, which is effectively a venture capitalist and has a substantial amount of money for investment in Oxford spinouts, so I forecast that not only will we see more spinouts, we will see more money invested in them. As a result of that, we’re going to see greater growth in the life sciences sector.”

To help accommodate that expansion, work is under way on the biggest ever speculative development at Milton Park. Three buildings at Park Drive East will add 110,000 sq ft of new office and laboratory space.

Another improvement on the way is the reopening of Backhill Tunnel, an underpass beneath the Didcot to Swindon railway line on the south side of Milton Park, which will create a new cycle and pedestrian access from the A4130. The tunnel linked the former military stores depots with housing at Milton Heights but was closed in the 1960s when the armed forces left.

The underpass project reflects park owner MEPC’s efforts to encourage people to consider alternatives to driving. The company runs frequent shuttle buses to Didcot Parkway railway station and has a dedicated travel adviser at Milton Park, who works with businesses to make them aware of all the options available.

Contact: miltonpark.co.uk 01235 865555