The pharmaceutical giant Novartis has published its plans to start redevelopment of its Horsham site. In August the County Times exclusively revealed that the company had decided to sell a significant part of its town campus in Wimblehurst Road, but confirmed its plans to lead world class respiratory research and associated development teams in Horsham. Last week a planning application was submitted to Horsham District Council (HDC) requesting permission to demolish several buildings on the site south of Parsonage Road covering nearly fives acres. These include production and store buildings of about three acres, the boiler house, chiller building, cycle rack, restaurant, document management centre, engineering building, ancillary services building, dispatch building and temporary offices. The iconic 1930s art deco building will be retained and enhanced. About 18 months ago the company announced a big reduction in its workforce there from nearly 1,000 to 440. At the time there were fears that this might be the ‘beginning of the end’ for the company’s involvement in the town. However the summer’s announcement stated the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research respiratory disease centre will continue to work on site and the UK Board had agreed the manufacturing would be moving away from Horsham as part of that process with last production scheduled for September 2013.
