The £1.2 billion innovation district, located in Oxford, received the title as part of CoStar’s 2025 Impact Awards, which recognise transformative achievements in commercial real estate.

Simon Ruck, managing director of Oxford North, said: “We are truly honoured to receive this significant recognition from CoStar.

“The Impact Awards shine a spotlight on the projects making a genuine and lasting contribution to the commercial real estate market, and to be named the most impactful development in the South East is a proud moment for everyone involved in Oxford North.

“We look forward to continuing to raise the bar as we progress the next phases and welcome more occupiers to what we believe will become one of the world’s most important innovation districts.”

Oxford North is being developed by Oxford North Ventures, a joint venture between Thomas White Oxford, the development company of St John’s College; Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan; and Stanhope.

The site is designed to support the full spectrum of the science, technology, and innovation ecosystem, from start-ups to established global firms.

It is expected to contribute £150 million per year to the economy in gross value added (GVA).

To date, it has supported more than 2,123 construction jobs, with 29 per cent filled by Oxfordshire residents.

Spanning 64 acres, Oxford North includes purpose-built laboratory and office space, 480 new homes, a hotel, nursery, and three public parks.

For businesses of all shapes and sizes, regular IT refreshes are essential to avoid outdated equipment impeding productivity, frustrating users, heightening security risks, and leading to unplanned downtime. 

With that said, refreshes aren’t always appealing or financially feasible for firms in the current economic climate. That’s not because firms don’t see the benefits of modernising devices, but because the upfront costs are simply too prohibitively expensive.

Traditionally, acquiring new devices has required businesses to commit to large capital outlays that, in recent times, have become even more eyewatering than usual. Largely driven by AI, demand for key computing components has risen and inventory shortages have emerged, driving up prices. Gartner has forecast a 130% surge in the cost DRAM and SSDs by the end of 2026, which will increase PC prices by 17% versus 2025, for example.

Consequently, many companies are delaying their refreshes and sweating their devices for longer due to a widening gap between what businesses know they need and what they feel they can realistically afford. 

For the channel, however, it’s also a problem. When customers are hesitant to refresh or upgrade their devices, channel partners in turn lose sales opportunities. 

The benefits of DaaS for channel partners and their customers

Here, DeviceasaService (DaaS) finance models can provide a solution to these challenges for channel partners and their customers alike. 

By giving businesses the ability to obtain devices on a financing basis, with simple monthly payments, DaaS can directly address those headaches for firms that cannot justify or afford large upfront expenses on tens or hundreds of devices.

Consider the impact: a single laptop refresh for a team of 10 might cost £6,500. For a small business, that is a significant investment. However, when those same devices can be leased from £17 per month per device, the finances no longer feel so prohibitive. 

It’s also worth noting that in DaaS models, customers will often pay less than a device’s overall capital value due to the anticipated residual value that those lending the devices will retain when they’re returned. As a result, customers’ upfront costs are reduced, their total cost of usage is lowered, and budgeting becomes more predictable, enabling firms to easily scale up or down their devices in line with their needs. 

For the channel, there are likewise several benefits. Indeed, financing payments in combination with the residual value of the devices can actually be more profitable than selling devices alone. Meanwhile, with many devices  leased for fixed terms, channel partners can benefit from predictable refresh cycles. 

In many cases, customers won’t buy all their devices at once. One year they might acquire 20. Six months later, they may need 20 more. As a result, channel partners can find themselves in a position where they have regular, predictable touchpoints with customers that can help to enhance regular customer interaction, with more touchpoints providing the opportunity to nurture relationships and improve customer loyalty.

Further, in my experience, customers typically tend to acquire more services and solutions when moving to DaaS models. This can include device enrolment, warranty extensions and support bundles that are far more margin-rich than the hardware itself. 

Why the channel hasn’t yet solved the financing challenge

While there are clear benefits for both channel partners and their customers, IT financing adoption remains relatively low in B2B spheres, with penetration sitting around 5%. Versus sectors like automotive, where financing or leasing can regularly be the default approach, this is comparatively extremely low. 

Often, the reason for this is that financing in IT is rarely positioned proactively. Indeed, many resellers will only explore it when a customer specifically asks for such a solution.

There’s a good reason for that. Indeed, traditional finance workflows are manual and painfully slow . Getting finance quotes can take hours, involving many emails, forms and constant back-and-forth.. As a result, there is little incentive for channel partners to proactively go out and seek financing quotes that customers may not even want to use.

To solve this challenge, channel partners should look to leverage fully digital, API-driven DaaS financing platforms. Critically, these can generate accurate, customisable DaaS quotes in under 30 seconds, which can then be delivered directly to the customer’s inbox.

With these tools, financing becomes a natural part of the sales process without the administrative burdens that usually come with it, replacing complex, hour-long workflows with financing options that we’re used to seeing in consumer spheres.

Democratising the market

Traditionally, DaaS hasn’t been made readily available for smaller customers. 

That makes little sense. Indeed, those smaller, more cost-conscious companies that are impacted the most by significant capital outlays have been most underserved in terms of device financing. Many of these firms would like the option to refresh on finance, but lack the ability to do so.

With the right tools, channel partners can help bridge this gap for their customers. The topi platform, for example, can enable channel firms to offer leased /financed based hardware solutions to any customer, whether they need two devices or 500, through the same seamless digital process.

For customers, it can feel instantly familiar. The model works much like car leasing – you get access to the equipment you need, pay a predictable monthly amount, use it for a term, and then return or upgrade it at the end.

The B2B market has been slow to follow in these convenient, digitised footsteps for years, until now. With API-driven integrations, modern DaaS tools can allow resellers to provide monthly pricing options directly on their website and allow customers to check out on a DaaS contract automatically.

A model that is gaining momentum

DaaS isn’t new, but it’s a space that’s evolving. With many large organisations already financing much of their IT through DaaS, there’s a real opportunity for channel partners to now bring similar solutions to the mid-market and SME space, catering to those firms that will benefit most from financing solutions.

It’s not a case of flipping sales processes on their head, but of making financing more flexible and efficient for customers to drive market growth. 

Channel partners and customers, expect fast quotes, predictable and constant pricing and a consumer-grade digital experience. topi delivers in these areas, getting fast quotes to customers to drive more conversions, greater customer loyalty, and predictable refresh cycles that provide the foundations for long‑term, scalable growth.

Cottsway Housing Association, the largest social housing provider in West Oxfordshire, began in 2001 as West Oxfordshire Housing.

It was formed through a Large-Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) of 3,643 homes from West Oxfordshire District Council, following a tenant consultation that resulted in a vote in favour of the transfer.

Since then, Cottsway has grown by around 65 per cent and will soon be taking handover of its 6,000th property, with homes in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire.

Andrew Hall, who will stand down as Board Chair at the end of this month, said: “Reaching our 25th anniversary is a proud moment for everyone connected to Cottsway.

“It’s an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve achieved together and, just as importantly, to look ahead.

“I will leave Cottsway knowing that it is in a strong, robust position and on track to deliver targets set out in its Corporate Plan with three key focus areas – most importantly ‘People’ and ‘Homes’, but also ‘Business strength’ which enables Cottsway to continue investing in current homes so that they are to the high standard customers expect and deserve, but also in a good position to continue providing more homes in the future.

“I would like to thank everyone who has played a role in Cottsway over the past two and a half decades and especially to our customers, for telling us when we get things right or when we could be doing things better so that we can take action to improve, because their views are what matter the most.”

To mark the anniversary, Cottsway has launched several community-focused initiatives.

These include an extra £25,000 for its Community Fund to support local projects that help residents gain new skills, improve wellbeing, and build stronger neighbourhoods.

The association will also donate 25 trees to a community to promote biodiversity.

Cottsway serves more than 13,000 customers, with more than three-quarters of its homes offered at social rent, typically half the cost of private market rent.

Where social rent is not feasible, homes are provided at affordable rent – about 20 per cent below market rates – or through shared ownership schemes.

The organisation invests more than £10 million annually in maintaining and upgrading existing homes, prioritising health and safety.

It has also secured government funding to improve energy efficiency in older properties and help residents manage energy costs.

Cottsway holds top ratings for viability and governance from the Regulator of Social Housing and reports a customer satisfaction rate of 85 per cent.

It recently published a corporate plan for 2023-2028, which sets out targets to deliver 833 new homes and invest £63 million in improving existing properties, including energy upgrades.

The plan commits more than £150 million toward meeting these goals over the next three years.