The UK Life Sciences Sector Plan (LSSP), launched in July 2025 as part of the government's 10-year Industrial Strategy, sets an ambitious vision: to make the UK a global life sciences leader by 2035.¹ This necessitates addressing the sector's current challenges - difficulties in commercialisation, slow clinical trial set-up and approvals, and limited access to capital, while building on its strengths and projected growth. The LSSP outlines a three-pillar strategy encompassing world-class R&D, a supportive business environment, and NHS-driven health innovation, all underpinned by robust oversight and accountability to ensure the UK achieves its ambitious goals and transforms groundbreaking discoveries into life-saving treatments and economic prosperity. This week’s blog sets the scene for a series of deeper dives, by exploring the detail of the plan, outlining the government's strategy for success and exploring the potential future of the UK life sciences industry if its ambitious goals are achieved.

About the LSSP

The UK government’s 10-year Industrial Strategy is a plan to increase business investment and grow the industries of the future in the UK, prioritising seven sectors, including life sciences.²

The LSSP envisions a future where, by 2035, the UK is a global leader in life sciences, harnessing world-leading science and genomics capabilities with market-leading regulatory and clinical research infrastructure and a data-driven ecosystem focused on prevention. The plan aims to support entrepreneurs, foster NHS innovation adoption, and drive economic growth and improved health outcomes. The ambitious targets are to be Europe’s leading life sciences economy by 2030 and the third largest globally (behind only the US and China) by 2035. Success depends on effective collaboration, oversight and accountability for delivery and progress, and addressing sector barriers.

Why is the life sciences sector deemed a priority sector?

The UK life sciences sector, a source of life-saving treatments, creates jobs, drives investment and powers innovation across the economy. Indeed, the UK boasts a strong history of innovation, with many globally used medicines and technologies originating in the UK, and recent successes like pioneering COVID-19 vaccine deployment and CRISPR technology approval. However, projected growth of £41 billion (165 per cent) by 2035, is threatened by challenges in commercialising and adopting discoveries, slower clinical trial approval times compared to competitors, and limited access to institutional capital for scaling. Consequently, it has struggled to capture and scale economic benefits. Intense global competition for investment necessitates comprehensive reform to overcome these obstacles and realise the sector's full economic and health potential.

Three interconnected pillars of LSSP

The Government’s plan is for life sciences to support the repair and transformation of both the nation’s economy as part of the Industrial Strategy, and the nation’s health in alignment with the commitments set out in the 10 Year Health Plan.³ It will receive over £2 billion in government funding, supplemented by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) contributions. The plan is built on three interconnected pillars:

1. Enabling world class R&D: This pillar focuses on boosting investment in discovery science, improving translational research, and streamlining commercial clinical trials. Actions include:

• continuing investment in discovery science, which accounted for 17 per cent of all UK business R&D in 2023, and ensuring the UK remains at the forefront of early-stage research to foster innovation and create new companies, including a 10-year funding allocation for the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
• establishing pre-clinical translational infrastructure, including a models hub and up to three integrated networks to reduce fragmentation, with at least £30 million of government funding
• publishing a strategy by the end of 2025 to reduce and ultimately eliminate animal testing
• improving the speed and capacity to deliver commercial trials and research, including reducing the time to set up commercial interventional clinical trials to under 150 days by March 2026,
• enhancing UKRI and NIHR support for biotech and medtech SMEs, including a new R&D innovation catalyst and improved digital connectivity to increase the speed and scale of real-world evaluation of AI to progress beyond pilot stages
• expanding and enhancing consented health research datasets and genomic infrastructure through the development of a new health data research service which increases access to health data, and by investing up to £354 million in Our Future Health, £20 million in UK Biobank, £650 million in Genomics England and implementing the NHS Genomic Medicine service.

2. Making the UK an outstanding place to start, grow, scale, and invest: This pillar aims to create a robust business environment that attracts investment and access to finance and skills. Actions include:

• providing £4 billion of Industrial Strategy Growth Capital, crowding in £12 billion of private sector capital and publishing British Business Bank’s VC investment return data to attract global investment
• developing dedicated export support for SMEs, utilising UK export finance (£80 billion in finance capacity) and global trade networks
• building a training and skills system that delivers a diverse and highly skilled life sciences workforce, maximising the use of existing programmes, and promoting UK strengths to attract exceptional international talent (supported by the global talent taskforce and visa system)
• delivering the £520 million Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF), and investing at scale in manufacturing innovation
• continuing to refine the implementation of the NHS Net Zero Roadmap, building on initiatives like the Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Programme and ensuring support for companies (especially SMEs) to supply the NHS while meeting net-zero targets
• landing at least one major strategic partnership per year, establishing a dedicated service to support 10-20 high-potential UK companies, and empowering the Health Innovation Network to drive innovation and investment.

3. Driving health innovation and NHS reform: This pillar focuses on ensuring rapid patient access to the most clinically and cost-effective technologies and enabling shifts from sickness to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital. Actions include:

• reducing unwanted barriers to market entry by increasing funding and support for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) including supporting digital transformation, reforming medical device regulations, utilising international reliance routes, developing an AI regulatory framework, improving AI integration in drug discovery and modernising patient information systems
• streamlining market entry through enhanced MHRA and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) coordination including establishing a single, integrated scientific advice service, improved alignment of decisions and guidance and delivering sustainable innovation pathways for products that meet unmet patient needs
• streamlining NICE appraisals and pricing agreements, rolling out confidential commercial pricing models in primary care, introducing a single national formulary, driving uptake of new biosimilars and introducing low-friction procurement mechanisms for MedTech (including the Rules Based Pathway and Innovator Passport), and a HealthStore for digital health apps
• establishing regional health innovation zones to foster large-scale experimentation and implementation of innovative solutions, and deliver on the ambitions of the Government’s Healthcare Goals programme (supporting R&D and adoption of new medicines and technologies addressing addiction, cancer, dementia, mental health and obesity)

How can success be achieved?

This LSSP aims to avoid past failures (namely “warm words without concrete action or hinted at difficult trade-offs without confronting them”) by setting out specific, measurable commitments, each with a named Senior Responsible Officer and annual transparent updates to track progress. A strengthened Life Sciences Council, co-chaired by government and industry, will monitor progress and alignment with the Industrial Strategy.  The government commits to extensive collaboration with industry, the NHS, devolved governments, and academia to achieve the plan's goals, harnessing Life Sciences clusters across the UK to drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

The potential future for UK life sciences

Should the aims of the LSSP be achieved, by 2035, the UK will have united the strengths of science, capital, industry and the NHS, and harnessed its leading science and genomics capabilities to be a global leader in Life Sciences. This will be evidenced by UK Life Sciences businesses raising a greater volume of scale-up capital than anywhere else in Europe, the UK being among the top three fastest in Europe for patient access to medicines and MedTech, and through faster licensing and registration, reduced health technology assessment timelines and costs, and widespread NHS adoption. This is a new model of partnership between science and society, government and industry and economic and health policy. We will follow the progress of this strategy and the steps towards achieving this vision and share them in future blogs.

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