Healthy City Design 2023 will put the spotlight on Heath Park

Runcorn: August 3, 2023: Heath Park is to feature at 7th Healthy City Design 2023 International Congress & Exhibition in Liverpool from October 16-17.

Press Release

The event, which is being staged outside London for the first time, will be held at the Royal College of Physicians in Liverpool with presentations being streamed to a global audience.

The Heath Park project was selected from 110 international submissions in a competitive evaluation process with organisers inviting SOG boss John Lewis MBE DL, the inspiration behind Heath Park, to give a presentation on the opening day.

SOG Group has submitted a planning application to Halton Borough Council in the next step of their ground-breaking proposals to transform The Heath Business and Technical Park at Runcorn into ‘Heath Park’, a 21st century version of Port Sunlight*.
Mr Lewis says: “I’m delighted we have been invited to give a presentation at the high-profile Healthy City Design 2023 International Congress. It provides us with another excellent platform to promote Heath Park to a global audience as we continue engagement with the international investment community to enable our vision to be turned into reality.”
Heath Park evolved from a global competition challenging architects, designers, planners and forward thinkers to create a sustainable futuristic environment, powered by renewable energy, where people can live, work and play.
The result is a visionary scheme to meet the challenges of Climate Change which addresses the predicted trends for future living including employment, housing, leisure, community, transport and energy consumption. The masterplan has taken three years of meticulous research by a dedicated team of expert consultants who have worked with leading academics from Lancaster and Liverpool Universities to produce, with validation, a revolutionary proposition to put before the planners.
Heath Park has been adopted as a Beacon Project by Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram and is validated by the UK Government. It is one of 35 ethical projects (only 2 from the North-West and Wales) that feature in the Department for International Trade’s Global Investment Atlas which aims to attract global investors.
A key element of Heath Park are proposals by SOG to build a ground-breaking ‘Field of the Future’ vertical farm powered by hydrogen or other renewable energy sources as a model that can put the UK at the forefront of ‘Net Zero’ farming technology. A world-first pilot study at The Heath conducted by Liverpool’s Farm Urban operation, SOG’s vertical farming advisors, demonstrated that it is possible to grow ‘Net Zero’ produce. The findings can put the UK at the forefront of the world’s challenge to grow carbon free food.

Farm Urban’s co-founder Dr Paul Myers, one of the UK’s leading authorities of vertical farming, will also presenting at HCD 2023 in a session focused on ‘Greening and feeding the city’.
For more information and to view the full programme for HCD 2023 go to:
www.healthycitydesign.global

For further details on Heath Park visit: www.heathpark-uk.com
* Heath Park’s ethos is modelled on ‘Port Sunlight’, the Victorian village built by industrialist Viscount Leverhulme in the 1800s. Reacting to appalling living conditions at the time, Lord Leverhulme’s inspiring idea created houses and community facilities in a healthy environment for workers of his soap factory

About Healthy City Design 2023
The Healthy City Design 2023 (HCD 2023) International Congress & Exhibition is a global forum for the exchange of knowledge on the research, policy and practice of designing healthy and sustainable cities and communities. Each day will open and close with keynote plenary sessions. The opening day will focus on population health; Design across the life course; Smart and inclusive cities and mobility; work and workplace. Day two will cover Urban design, planning and public realm; planetary health; Health-creating communities; Social value and resilience. As well as oral presentations and discussions, the event will host a Video and Poster Gallery of innovative research and projects alongside a knowledge-focused exhibition of design solutions for cities, communities and workplaces. All the sessions will be streamed virtually for delegates unable to attend in person.

About SOG
SOG is one of the UK’s top independent operators of business and science parks and are renowned site regeneration specialists. SOG own The Heath Business and Technical Park in Runcorn, Cheshire, which is home to over 120 individual businesses that between them support the employment of around 2,000 people. Using The Heath business model, SOG created a consultancy operation under the name of ‘Fusion’. SOG’s Fusion team spearheaded the regeneration of a massive site in east London, formerly home to a global pharmaceutical company, where it created Londoneast-uk Business and Technical Park. Until February 2019, SOG operated Londoneast-uk as a sister Park to The Heath before selling it to a company owned by the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. Through its Fusion concept, SOG helped to generate over £2 billion of inward investment to the Dagenham site regeneration programme.

SOG’s Runcorn operation is a unique example of how a successful science and technology park should operate. Many of the organisations located in the facilities are at the very cutting-edge of scientific R&D, with firms specialising from nanotechnology to carbon emissions research and from pioneering work on hip and knee joint replacements to water and waste-water treatment technology. As The Heath site has reached full capacity, SOG has embarked on a new build-programme which allows existing fast-growing resident businesses to move out of multi-occupancy units into their own exclusive bespoke buildings, designed and built by SOG’s team. SOG is currently working on the vision to transform The Heath into a Net Zero carbon environment over the next decade through the creation of Heath Park.

Media contact: Paul Smith Associates (PSA) +44 (0) 7771 623 007
E-mail: paul@paulsmithassociates.co.uk

About The Heath
The Heath Business and Technical Park is a phenomenal regeneration success story. Formed in 2000, its owner and operator, SOG Ltd, has transformed a once single occupancy corporate facility into a thriving independent business park. The Heath now provides office and laboratory accommodation for more than 120 individual organisations, ranging from business services and IT specialists to those at the cutting edge of science, research and advanced manufacturing. Around 2,000 people are employed at the site. For further information, telephone 01928 515988 or visit www.theheath.com

For more information, please see:
www.theheath.com

PAUL SMITH ASSOCIATES
4th August 2023