Oxford city councillors on the planning committee all gave the thumbs up to Larry Ellison’s further plans for the science park off Grenoble Road in Littlemore.

Approval has been given to the Ellison Institute to extend the existing three buildings upwards and add two ‘link atriums’ connecting them together to form one large research and development centre.

READ MORE: Council flags ‘significant issues’ with Oxfordshire market place plan

The first atrium will have walkways on all levels and will serve as the principal entrance, featuring meeting rooms, seminar space and a cafe.

And the second will have stepped terraces to accommodate shared workspaces, a concealed 250-seat auditorium and a greenhouse.

Now that the planning application has been granted permission, work that has already begun on-site from the initial plans can resume, having been put on hold pending the results.

Image of how the buildings will look (Image: Oxford City Council)

Oxford City Council first approved plans for three separate lab and office buildings on plots 23-26 at the science park back in 2023.

It will include 30,000 sq m of research laboratories, supercomputing facilities, an oncology and preventative care clinic, plus a “state‑of‑the‑art” home for the Generative Biology Institute and the Plant Biology Institute.

Costing more than £1 billion, the campus was due to open fully in 2027, but timescales are likely to have been delayed amid these changed designs.

Construction works on the site have been put on pause (Image: Oxford City Council)

At the council meeting on Tuesday, June 23, Guy Wakefield, planner at built environment consultancy Ridge, and Matt Abney, senior director of real estate and projects at the Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford appeared for the development.

Mr Wakefield said the scheme is expected to support around 1,900 full-time equivalent roles in the construction phase rising to over 3,500 annual full-time equivalent roles, once the building is fully operational.

He added: “Another benefit is the actual operations that are taking place within the buildings and what will hopefully be achieved within them.”

The planner cited that part of its biology research will focus on food production, with the amount needed to be produced between now and 2050, higher than the last 5,000 years combined.

Chair of Oxford City Planning Committee Louise Upton (Image: Ed Nix)

On the research, he said: “It’s critical to the sustainability of the environment and the world and we can’t see those needs ending.”

At the meeting questions were asked about tree planting, after a Thames Water pipe meant that an area of proposed trees had to be scrapped, as well as car park provision.

The new plans for Plots 23-26 Oxford Science Park (Image: Oxford City Council)

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The science park is in walking distance from the proposed Littlemore Station for the upcoming Cowley Branch Line, which will provide rail links to the city centre and London Marylebone.

As such plans for parking spots have already been reduced significantly, to a number the council deemed acceptable.

Larry Ellison, co-founder of tech giant Oracle, is reputed to be the fifth richest man in the world and is behind a number of other projects in and around Oxford.

That includes the refurbishment of world-famous pub The Eagle and Child.

The BBC presenter has revealed that her first Radio 2 Breakfast show will launch on Monday, July 6, (6.30am – 9.30am) with her first guest set to be Hollywood star Tom Hanks.

Speaking on Vernon Kay’s Radio 2 show (9.30am-12pm), about her new venture, Ms Cox said: “Roll on the 6 July!”

She added: “For generations to come people will (probably) say ‘where were YOU when the Sara Cox Breakfast Show was launched on Radio 2 featuring the legendary Tom Hanks?'”

READ MORE: Leading UK charity collapses with £430k owed and jobs lost

The Sara Cox Breakfast Show on Radio 2 will feature a fresh new format, packed with fun and games, as well as the world’s biggest stars.

This news comes after a charity she backed, Auditory Verbal, went into liquidation with jobs lost.

Auditory Verbal stars in BBC One appeal with radio presenter Sara Cox in 2018 (Image: AVUK)

Based in Kirtlington Road, Chesterton, near Bicester, the organisation described itself as the “leading provider of Auditory Verbal therapy in the UK”, aiming to ensure all deaf children have the same opportunities in life as their hearing peers.

She was involved in an appeal for the charity in 2018, when it was featured on television.

However, since then – and more than 20 years since it was set up – the charity has found it impossible to continue and announced its closure in a statement on its website.

Bicester-based charity Auditory Verbal stars in BBC One appeal with radio presenter Sara Cox. pictured is Kurran Doal, 15 (Image: AVUK)

Earlier this year, a spokesperson said: “Like many charities, AVUK has been operating in an increasingly challenging and turbulent environment for some time.

“Over recent months, despite strong progress pursing our strategy and continued delivery of high quality, life changing support, the financial pressures facing the charity have intensified to a point where it is no longer possible for us to operate sustainably. 

“We understand that the speed of this closure may come as a shock.

Bicester Mayor Les Sibley (right) with workers at Auditory Verbal UK launching Loud Shirt Day. Pic by Jon Lewis.

“This has been an incredibly difficult decision, taken with the greatest care for the families, professionals and supporters who have placed their trust in AVUK over the years.”

In its latest company accounts the organisation listed 30 employees, all of whom will have lost their jobs.

READ MORE: Top UK charity’s £350k debts to National Lottery and Amazon

In addition it noted creditors falling within a year worth £433,557 although the company’s recently released ‘statement of affairs’ said its creditors were £349,309 in total.

The new documents also listed the businesses that Auditory Verbal owed money to.

Among the major names mentioned are Amazon (owed £476) and the National Lottery Community Fund (owed £2,062).

In addition Auditory Verbal was £83,426 in debt to the tax man HMRC and £12,815 in debt to Lloyds Bank.

KYND has launched Portfolio Analytics for cyber insurers, giving them a live view across their portfolios.

The launch targets a market under pressure to show that cyber risk is being monitored and managed across books of business, rather than assessed at a single point in time.

Built into KYND’s existing platform, Portfolio Analytics is designed to show where risk sits across insured organisations and whether those organisations are addressing it. Insurers can use it to identify exposure to critical vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited and track how long those issues remain unresolved.

That focus reflects a shift in the cyber insurance market. Insurers have spent years trying to map exposure, but losses linked to third-party providers, supply chains and widely used software have made it harder to judge risk through occasional reviews alone.

Lloyd’s 2026 Market Oversight Plan has sharpened attention on evidence-based portfolio oversight, with insurers expected to demonstrate how they monitor and manage cyber risk across their portfolios. At the same time, claims data points to faster-moving incidents and broader spillover effects when a single weakness is exploited across multiple organisations.

According to Chubb’s 2026 Cyber Claims Report, 65% of large companies now rank third-party and supply-chain vulnerabilities as their biggest cyber challenge, up from 54% a year earlier. IBM data cited in the same report showed the average cost of a US data breach rose above USD $10.2 million in 2025, compared with a global average of USD $4.4 million.

Market pressure

Cyber insurers are facing closer scrutiny over how they oversee accumulated exposure. The issue has become more pressing as attacks have spread beyond individual companies through shared suppliers and technology providers.

KYND cited the attack on Jaguar Land Rover in August 2025 as an example of the scale such incidents can reach. The incident affected more than 5,000 UK organisations and cost the economy an estimated GBP £1.9 billion, making it one of the costliest cyber events to hit Britain.

The new analytics product is already being used by leading insurers, though KYND did not name them. The tool is intended to help insurers identify concentrations of risk earlier and support discussions with policyholders about remediation.

Andy Thomas, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of KYND, said the sector now faces a different challenge.

“Growing expectations around active portfolio management present a particular challenge for cyber insurers, given the speed at which cyber risks can emerge and spread across interconnected organisations, suppliers and technology providers. For much of the last decade, cyber insurers have focused on understanding where risk exists across their portfolios, but the threat landscape has evolved. In an environment where a newly exploited vulnerability can turn into loss in minutes and a single event can create losses across multiple insured organisations, a point-in-time view of risk is no longer enough. Increasingly, insurers need to understand not only where exposure exists, but whether it is being reduced,” said Andy Thomas, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of KYND.

Remediation focus

A central element of the product is its emphasis on whether exposed organisations are fixing identified weaknesses. That shifts the conversation beyond underwriting at policy inception to ongoing oversight during the life of a policy.

KYND said the platform can highlight higher-risk exposures and emerging areas of concern across an insurer’s portfolio. It also provides prioritised remediation guidance to insured organisations, which can help insurers improve engagement with clients and make decisions about overall exposure.

The approach reflects a broader change in cyber insurance, as underwriters and portfolio managers look for clearer signs that policyholders are reducing the likelihood or severity of claims. In a market shaped by systemic events, tracking unresolved vulnerabilities over time may become as important as identifying them in the first place.

“Insurers need better ways to understand how risk is changing across their portfolios over time. Access to that insight can help them identify concentrations of risk earlier, engage more effectively with insureds and make better-informed decisions about portfolio exposure,” Thomas said.