THE MP has appealed to the Prime Minister calling on his support to secure plans for Lakes BioScience at the GSK Site in Ulverston.

Simon Fell, MP for Barrow and Furness, has penned a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson appealing for his backing to secure the site for Lakes BioScience which he believes will be a 'win-win' for the community'.

Earlier this month, GSK announced it would shutter their facilities in Ulverston by 2025 after 75 years of operation following the sale of their antibiotics business to Sandoz.

Mr Fell said: "We are asking the UK Government to press GSK into backing a local business - Lakes BioScience.

"Lakes BioScience have community support, planning permission to establish their modular base opposite GSK's existing Ulverston facilities, and offer our community, and the UK as a whole, badly needed contract manufacturing facilities.

"This project would establish an appropriate and substantial legacy at Ulverston, providing resilience for the existing workforce, strengthening supply chains, and levelling-up a community that badly needs it.

"Lakes BioScience have secured £350million in private funding to build a new state-of-the-art bio-manufacturing facility on this site employing 250 people, but they require a keystone contract to progress.

"It is our belief that GSK should provide the first keystone supply contract to enable the release of Lakes BioScience's funding and so that the project build at Ulverston to go ahead.

"For modest cost and effort, GSK could be the catalyst for Lakes BioScience to establish a new biopharmaceutical manufacturing and development company, able to successfully compete in the global market.

"Such a contract would be to the benefit of both parties, enabling the continuation of pharmaceutical manufacturing at Ulverston, and improving UK biopharmaceutical manufacturing capability and capacity as a whole.

"If GSK truly want to leave a meaningful legacy in Ulverston, securing its future, then they will back Lakes BioScience and pay back the work that this hardworking community has undertaken for the best part of 75 years.

"We are very grateful to GSK for their engagement with the community to date and their clear commitment to ensure that existing staff are supported.

"However, securing a meaningful legacy goes far beyond that. Government support in challenging GSK to back Lakes BioScience with a contract will secure the levelling up agenda, build UK resilience for future public health emergencies, and meet the challenges posed by Project Defend and the UK Life Science Industrial Strategy.

"It will represent a win-win for my local community and for the UK as a whole at a time when we want to build biopharmaceutical capacity."