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AstraZeneca U-turn green lights £300m, two-site spend in Cambridge and Macclesfield

April 29, 2026

News

Life Sciences

Drugs development, Investment, Pharmaceutical

AstraZeneca has made a dramatic U-turn on its investments in UK life sciences, announcing it will now proceed with a £300 million outlay in its Cambridge and Macclesfield sites.

Last year, the Government’s plans to develop the sector’s international standing and economic output suffered a public setback when the firm said it was putting a brake on previous schemes for development at the locations.

Now AstraZeneca has confirmed it will go ahead with the £200m scheme to develop its Rosalind Franklin centre beside its existing headquarters in Oxford.

It has also given the green light to a £100m spend on a drug development lab of the future on the Macclesfield, Cheshire site.

Between them the two locations account for nearly 80% of AstraZeneca’s total UK workforce of more than 10,000.

Last year, a cut in state support for AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufacturing site in Merseyside was followed months later by the company’s pause on the Cambridge project.

The firm also faced pressure to place further emphasis on investment in the United States, while levels of NHS spending and pricing on medicines was also compared unfavourably by firms to other developed nations’ expenditure.

Speaking in Parliament, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer cited the positive impact of the recent US-UK trade deal finalised in April.

In return for favourable US concessions on tariffs, the UK committed to increases in drug pricing, a doubling of the spend on new medicines and a cap in repayment rates for drug companies under the VPAG scheme with a reduction to 15% from last year’s 22%

The prime minister said the deal had been “made possible by the pharmaceutical arrangement we have struck with the United States, to future-proof thousands of jobs in Macclesfield and in Cambridge.”