The UK Science Park Association, which represents 50 science parks in the UK, and one in Ireland, celebrated its 15th anniversary last month. It comes at a time of optimism. The government's emphasis on knowledge-based industries brings an opportunity for further growth after a period in which the movement had appeared to reach a plateau.

One of its main roles is lobbying government, and it is pleased to find it now receives a welcome in Whitehall. Peter Russell, the association's chairman and director of Brunel Science Park in Uxbridge, emerged from a meeting this month with Lord Sainsbury, science minister, encouraged that the government sees sense in growing indigenous businesses instead of relying on inward investment. "It's so important that a country invests in the resources of its own people," Mr Russell says.

The association was founded in 1984 by the eight science parks then in existence. Its aim was to offer advice and encouragement to new parks being developed and to promote awareness and understanding of the science park movement.

It holds meetings around the country so that members can exchange ideas and experience, carries out an annual statistical survey and produces best practice guides. It acts as an information point for members, government, foreign embassies, industry and financiers, lobbies on matters of common concern, and co-ordinates consultancy and training assignments worldwide. It also publishes a directory and annual report.

Alan Mason was appointed five months ago as its first chief executive. He is on secondment from Barclays Bank, where he spent 30 years in corporate banking and risk management. The association has an administrative office based at Aston Science Park, Birmingham.

"We have recently looked harder at what we are offering," he says. "Just as the membership reached a plateau, the strength of the organisation also reached a point where it needed review. We are now looking at ways of adding value to our members through stronger training programmes and seminars.

"We are also improving our publications. We are looking at ways in which we can exploit the 27,000-employee strength of tenants, and what opportunities we can provide because their science park is a member of Ukspa."

The association has developed a new website that includes an "online community" for members to exchange ideas and advertise for personnel. Mr Mason adds: "We hope to capture tenants' interest through offering a database on the website in which they can put up a little story about themselves."

It has also redefined what it considers a science park to be, playing down the emphasis on them as property ventures, for which they have sometimes been criticised.

According to the new definition, a science park is "a business support initiative whose main aim is to encourage and support the start-up and incubation of innovative, high-growth, technology-based businesses through the provision of: infrastructure and support services including collaborative links with economic development agencies; formal and operational links with centres of excellence such as universities, higher education institutes and research establishments; management support actively engaged in the transfer of technology and business skills to small and medium-sized enterprises."

There are three categories of membership: full, for those that meet all the criteria; associate, for new parks that intend to comply with the definition; and affiliate membership for organisations with similar objectives. New applicants are visited by an executive member to ensure they meet the criteria.

ost are associated with a higher education establishment, but some are based around other types of research centre. Belasis Hall Technology Park, opened in 1988 in Gateshead and linked with Imperial Chemical Industries' research laboratories, was the first. Others have followed.

The number of companies spun out of academic institutions - which comprise only about 20 per cent of science park tenants - is sometimes seen as an issue, though the others make use of academic research or benefit from mixing with other scientific businesses and researchers.

The association is proud of its overseas consultancy work. Since last year, Nigel Halford, director of Newlands Science Park in Hull, has led a programme, supported by the British Council, to train managers and help establish a science park association in Jiangsu province in China.

Now the scheme is being expanded to the whole of China in an agreement to be signed in November, involving China's ministry of science and technology and the UK's department of trade and industry. It will entail training managers for China's 47 rapidly growing science parks. Mr Halford says China, which is dominated by small and medium-sized businesses, is keen on the UK model of partnership between academic institutions and businesses, along with its business support and venture capital network.

Other countries in which UK science parks have been involved include the Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Zimbabwe. Malcolm Parry, general manager of Surrey Research Park, says: "I got an inquiry from Nairobi yesterday. Gothenberg were here last week."


Movement goes from strength to strength


UK Science Parks Association