Britain’s got talent – right?
How can we retain our intellectual capital in the age of the exodus?
Ebb and flow, ebb and flow: like a river’s meandering course or the ocean waves, people have always spilled back and forth across the world. But what if the outgoing tide starts to significantly outweigh the inflow, and it’s not just a random cross-section of the population? What if it’s our most masterly minds, with the specific skillsets and experience required for a top-tier knowledge industry to stay ahead of the global curve technologically, economically, culturally, and socially – and survive? The UK is reportedly facing such a challenge, and there are concerns that a pool of highly skilled workers swirling down the drain could not only derail the innovation-based labour market, but the vitality of the country.
Source: Office for National Statistics revisions
Talent leak
Losing folk on the frontiers of healthcare or academia hurts but the impacts differ. The departure of a doctor, for instance, has immediate and tangible consequences for public health, while an academic researcher embracing pastures new might affect long-term innovation and educational standards. “In our built world,” says Steve Delvin, Director at Hoare Lea, “the loss of an engineer puts pressure on the contracting supply chain and its ability to deliver high-quality projects that support the country’s growth ambitions and broader needs of the population.”
Institutions rely on experience. Acquisition and retention are key drivers of growth and success. Human capital can’t be undervalued. The thing is, ‘human capital’ is a bit of a contradiction in terms, and for those humans themselves, the value of safety, security, and quality of life is immeasurable.
The (not-so Great) British brain drain
Professionals are packing up their knowledge and experience and heading for higher ground – better conditions, and a more fertile landscape of opportunity abroad.
UK cost of living is sky high. Thousands of career-driven Europeans have headed for places such as pro-business Singapore. (Hello, investment in housing, infrastructure, and safety – for starters.)
With birth rates in decline and many big global economies populated by majority older people – take Japan’s glut of octogenarians – more youthful countries are more likely to thrive.
Brexit reduced labour mobility, and rising nationalism has increased cultural polarisation. The societal atmosphere is less welcoming for migrant and globally oriented professionals. It makes the country appear inward-looking and unstable, with relocation more appealing. Strict immigration policies and nationalist discourse look like barriers to career growth.
Slow planning keeps housing issues difficult and expensive, and, indirectly, drives skilled professionals away.
Economic uncertainty = fewer job openings and cautious employers. Reduced internal movement and lack of training delays career progression. Many employees feel stuck.
The openness of other global borders is exacerbating internal UK challenges and diminishing its competitive advantage.
Portugal’s tech visa has resulted in a huge increase in foreign tech workers, and many nations are actively building low-cost ‘brain gain’ ecosystems with visa incentives, lower taxes, and lifestyle benefits.
Photo: Ellison Institute of Technology
Attract, retain, grow: Advanced Oxford
While losing science and tech talent overseas has always been an issue, over the last 10 years academic careers have become more precarious in the UK. The country has become less attractive to those wanting to establish their careers and enjoy a sense of continuity, according to Sarah Haywood, managing director of Advanced Oxford.
This not-for-profit membership group – part of the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board – brings together companies, institutions and organisations focused on innovation and knowledge-related business in Oxfordshire. In recent years it has been looking into building the skills and talent pipeline for Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem.
“In the UK, we’re very good at idea generation and starting companies, but not so good at scaling and sourcing capital; ensuring that ownership doesn’t go overseas,” she says. “A good example is the life sciences sector. As companies raise rounds of investment, original founders and investors are diluted out and, as much-needed private capital is brought in, companies come to rely on international investors. Then, even if the company is registered here, it’s the international investors who make the decisions, and they often shift the locus of the company.”
We’re very good at idea generation and starting companies, but not so good at scaling and sourcing capital; ensuring that ownership doesn’t go overseas.
Sarah Haywood
Managing Director, Advanced Oxford
With deeper pools of capital, traditionally, it was always the United States which was the more inviting proposition, drawing talent away from our shores, although it’s less desirable today. Haywood points to the Francis Crick Institute – the UK’s flagship biomedical laboratory – which, she says, showed a clear intention while establishing itself to bring in skilled people who would stay, have tenure for significant time to establish their careers, and not be subjected to vagaries of securing grant funding.
More recently, as the Financial Times reported in 2025, it made efforts to secure extra cash to capitalise on the States’ own brain-drain issue and attract scientists “fleeing” President Trump’s academic crackdown. It has since opened and closed a round of recruitment, with hires to be announced.
Haywood feels the extent to which the UK’s character is seen to be appealing is a major factor affecting its brain drain today. “The issue is that our narrative, our rhetoric, our approach to immigration, is unfriendly to international talent. The uncertainty about ‘right to remain’ makes the UK less attractive but it’s also giving pause to people who are here; do they even want to stay? The UK’s just not as open and welcoming as it used to be.”
You’ve got a (mis)match! Narrative versus policy
“One of the things we’ve been looking at is the mismatch between narrative and policy,” she says. “There’s immigration whitepaper policy raising thresholds on one hand – making it more difficult for people to come here and harder for students to stay – versus an industrial strategy that says ‘we’re open to talent and we want to encourage entrepreneurs to come in’.
“But all the visa routes, from our analysis, look as if they’re about attracting in people who would come to set up their companies here or bring companies with them. There are examples of organisations that will act as attractors to bring people in; the likes of the Francis Crick Institute and the Ellison Institute of Technology. Clearly there is huge ambition at EIT in terms of their growth and the workforce, and they will need to go international to attract people in.”
CASE STUDY
From Tolkien to tech: supporting the innovation ecosystem.
“I’ve become used to passing groups of trendy students engrossed in earnest discussion on a mathematical theory,” says Director Chris Dicks of living and working in Oxford for the past 20 years. “Such small things make the city what it is – home to one of the oldest universities in the world and the Oxford English Dictionary, and a vital player in the launch of the first Covid vaccine. It’s famed for its literary past as much as its cutting-edge science research, so it is very appropriate that these should come together in the form of the Eagle and Child pub project.”
For those uninitiated in the lore of the Inklings – a group of authors including JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis – said pub dates from medieval times, and its snug, known as the Rabbit Room, was the regular haunt of these authors from the 1930s to the early 1960s. After a substantial extension in the 1980s, the pub became a favourite among tourists alongside locals and students but closed its doors for the last time during the pandemic.
Uncertainty followed, with deteriorating building fabric and worries that it could be lost forever.
Enter, the Ellison Institute of Technology…
Founded by major software company Oracle’s Larry Ellison, the Ellison Institute of Technology is on a mission to solve some of the world’s most complex challenges through science and interdisciplinary collaboration. Construction is well underway at its new 300,000 sq ft Littlemore Campus on the edge of Oxford, with the opening of its innovative Eagle and Child pub project planned for summer 2027. It will become a transformative workplace of research laboratories, educational and gathering spaces, with cross-cutting AI and data capabilities.
“This campus is planned to grow to two million square feet in the coming decade, reimagining the western quarter of Oxford Science Park,” Dicks says. “But the EIT seeks to do something more fundamental, and that is to bring people and ideas together beyond just science and technology.
It seems entirely fitting that, in these times of virtual online collaboration, EIT has instead recognised the importance of physical placemaking, and that the humble British pub is, in fact, just the right space to deliver their vision to bring people together.
Chris Dicks
Director, Hoare Lea
Eagle and Child images courtesy of Foster + Partners
Reimagining the Rabbit Room
“The Eagle and Child provides just that opportunity, truly at the heart of Oxford in all senses. The transformation will deliver a meeting space upstairs for EIT’s scholars, teams and collaborators, not unlike an Oxford college senior common room.
“The pub will reopen to all, freshly refurbished with the historic interior enhanced. To the rear, a new dining room (Foster + Partners designed) will lead onto the courtyard, and completing the development will be a café, baking cakes and pastries on site.”
Getting these facilities neatly designed to fit within such a confined and historically important building is no simple matter. “To date, eight of our disciplines have been involved on everything from lighting design to fire consultancy, working closely with the wider design team and contractors Savvy,” says Dicks.
So whether it is to debate the latest developments in generative biology, ponder the literary meanings of The Lord of the Rings, or discuss the last Oxford United match, the Eagle and Child will be open, and welcoming, to all.
Our goal is to continue and contribute to the Eagle and Child’s legacy as a vibrant social and intellectual hub where ideas, debate and creativity thrive...
Tom Myers
Senior Director of Architecture and Experience, Ellison Institute of Technology
“The future… it may belong to those who know how to transform migration into an advantage.”
Umar Safdar, Director of Research and Innovation at the University of Buraimi in Oman, has 20 years’ experience in higher education in various countries and a PhD in innovation and technology management. In his recent essay Brain Drain Is Dangerous – But Is It the National Disaster We Keep Calling It?, he talks on the topic from the perspective of Pakistan. While going so far as to romanticise this kind of migration would be “naïve”, he says, especially when it reflects institutional failure and is driven by despair rather than opportunity, declaring it a national disaster oversimplifies reality.
Of course, the UK and Pakistan differ in many ways – for starters, Pakistan’s population is one of the world’s youngest and Safdar points out that its outward flow serves partly as a labour-market release valve that “reduces domestic unemployment pressures while converting surplus labour into foreign income streams.” But its talent migration can be good for international reputation: it reflects well on the country to have its top engineers managing big projects overseas or its academics publishing in major journals abroad.
“In a globalised era where narratives influence trade, investment, and diplomacy, diaspora excellence becomes a form of soft power,” says Safdar. “Countries such as India and China have successfully leveraged their overseas communities into networks of technology transfer, venture capital, and research collaboration.”
The question, he suggests, is not whether people leave, it is whether there’s a strategy in place, built around institutional bridges that keep them connected to their country.
Satellite schools: scattering seeds of growth
- Attract international talent into British education pathways
- Preserve UK educational influence when students are unable/reluctant to relocate to Britain
- Maintain academic/cultural ties with globally mobile families
As part of strategic efforts to diversify revenue by reaching new student markets – in the face of rising operational costs and school fees VAT – UK private schools are increasingly establishing international campuses. A trend that reflects growing demand for British education, setting up a satellite school abroad gives an educational institution the freedom to grow without being constrained by UK border policies or limitations on international student mobility.
Countries such as India and China have successfully leveraged their overseas communities into networks of technology transfer, venture capital, and research collaboration.
Umar Safdar
Director of Research and Innovation, University of Buraimi, Oman
CASE STUDY
Signalling the next century of discovery:
Oxford North.
Big, bold, standing out from the crowd, this highlight in red is the new civic heart of Oxford North, and Phase 1A is now complete. With labs, workspace, 480 homes and public parkland, the innovation district that The Red Hall sits within targets the entire science, technology and AI ecosystem, from start-ups and university spin-outs through to global corporates. It offers the full lifecycle of space from fitted labs and turnkey solutions to grow-on space and bespoke buildings.
“It was a proud moment to see the distinctive buildings on Oxford’s skyline,” says Iain Hughes, Senior Associate, Hoare Lea. “We’re excited to see them become a hive of activity and innovation, and a new landmark in the city.”
Hybrid theory: optionality over rigidity
Specific to the built environment industry, there is a proactive step that we can take to support innovation and, in turn, retain talent. We must create spaces that facilitate growth, or, better still, convert those that already exist and help with sites’ transition towards multi-use.
Since retail took a post-internet nosedive, the more common strategy is now to build it within 15-minute-city-style residential and workplace schemes. This design approach – less siloed, more connective – is being applied to other areas, such as advanced manufacturing, data, logistics, health, mobility, even some R&D.
While there are exceptions – labs and clinical spaces that require controlled environments, for example – we’re seeing shared constraints forcing convergence. Technology advances are opening up schemes previously deemed too complex to contemplate; policy and planning changes favour multi-use thinking; investors – seeing adaptability outperforming the single-use space both in terms of risk and financial returns – are wanting optionality over rigidity.
Rethinking existing space and repurposing into high-value, low-cost workspace for robotics and automation start-ups, climate-tech, biofabrication, and who knows what else besides, could be one way of remedying the brain drain.
Let’s get modular and get the country growing, developing, and evolving.
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