Savills : appoints Tom Mellows to spearhead expanding science capability

Tom, a director in the Savills South East office agency team since 2005, has been instrumental in the rapid growth of Savills science capability. He will build on the significant progress made by Matt Soules, director in the Cambridge building & project consultancy team, who will continue to play a key operational and advisory role moving forward.

Savills Science provides specialist transactional and consultancy advice to a wide range of occupiers and landlords on the planning, disposal, acquisition and development of laboratory space. Utilising cross-divisional expertise, the team has been responsible for a number of significant deals and projects in 2021 including: the 75,357 sq ft (7,000 sq m) pre-let to Autolus Therapeutics in Stevenage on behalf of Reef and UBS, the £77 million acquisition of Rolling Stock Yard in King's Cross on behalf of Life Science REIT and the 35,000 sq ft (3,251 sq m) fit-out of DNAe's new office and laboratory accommodation at Scale Space White City. Savills planning team has also been appointed by Bruntwood SciTech to provide advice on a new masterplan for the 16.4 acre (6.6 hectare) Melbourn Science Park in Cambridge.

Also joining the team is Rupert Dando, an associate from the firm's Cambridge office. He will use his experience gained in one of the UK's key science markets to help service growing demand in emerging locations, particularly London. He will be based at the firm's Margaret Street head office.

This follows a strong 2021, which saw the appointment of Steve Chatfield as science special advisor and the acquisition of US life science and tech advisory firm T3. Savills also strengthened its Oxford-Cambridge Arc capability by welcoming directors Robert Godfrey and Mark Taylor to the business.

Tom Mellows, head of Savills UK science, comments: "Having focused on this specialist sector for some time, I am looking forward to further growing Savills Science. The market has seen major growth, transacting record volumes in 2021 with significantly more in the pipeline for the year ahead. It is fantastic that we have such an excellent team to help service the level of demand that we are now seeing across the UK."

Richard Rees, managing director of Savills UK, adds: "We are very pleased to see Tom spearheading the expansion of our sciences capability, which remains a key growth sector for the business. Our considerable cross-divisional expertise has allowed us to make excellent inroads within this space and Tom's new role will help to consolidate this success further still."