Another giant step has been taken in York to turn the city into the nation's prime centre for bioscience research in the new millennium.

A £1 million scheme to build laboratories for fledgling high tech businesses gets under way in February as an extension to the Innovation Centre on the Science Park next to York University.

And it could be the trigger for a new influx of scientific innovation and discovery in York adding to around £5 million investment already planned for 2000.

The six laboratories in a two-storey extension should be completed by August and are good news for Bio-incubator York Ltd, the organisation funded by the DTI and ML Laboratories to foster new bio-tech ventures, which has no laboratories or buildings of its own.

Many of the new firms which could take advantage of the scheme are already among the 35 on the waiting list for tenancies at the Innovation Centre which has been fully let since completion in 1995.

Professor Tony Robards, pro vice-chancellor of the University of York said the laboratories would be the first time that such facilities will have been created for start-up businesses, whether spinoffs from the university or others.

He said: "We have a number of companies starting up from the university who need laboratory space but there are no commercial laboratories available.

"The university's facilities are totally full and anyway such companies need confidentiality and security."

Already there are plans to ease the queue for tenancies. One proposal is to build 50,000 sq ft of more individual office buildings at the Innovation Centre - an investment of £5 million for which detailed planning consent would be sought.

But Susanne Walker, manager of the Innovation Centre said: "If this extension for new laboratories works then it has been suggested that we could build another 30,000 sq ft of labs and offices to create a second bio-incubator project."

The science "nursery" is a crucial element in the City of York Council's strategy to lead York's economy into a booming 21st century, with bioscience expected to help significantly towards the generation of a further 1,600 jobs, direct and indirect, by 2002.

The expectation is that newer high tech firms fostered in York will grow rapidly as the European market for biotechnology products - now worth an estimated £30 billion - expands to £100 billion by 2005.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.