Once home to a banking giant, Pennine Five has been reimagined as a people-first innovation campus at the heart of the Sheffield Innovation Spine. unLTD paid a visit to find out how ambitious businesses, shared space and a growing social scene are helping shape the city’s next chapter.
On the fringes of central Sheffield, just off Tenter Street, sits a sprawling campus that tells you something about where the city is heading. Pennine Five – or P5, as it is often referred to – is not a shiny new development built from scratch, nor a parachuted-in tech hub. Instead, it is a reimagining of what Sheffield already had, and a confident statement about the sort of place it wants to become.
Bought by RBH Properties Group in 2019, the five-block complex dates back to 1971, originally built as HSBC’s regional headquarters and once home to more than 2,000 staff. Rather than demolish and rebuild, RBH made the decision to renew and reinvent the site. It was a bold move, and one that paid off, with Pennine Five winning Sustainable Development of the Year in 2023 .
Today, the complex comprises five large office blocks, 47 floors in total, wrapped around a central plaza soon to host everything from communal wellbeing sessions to al fresco seating for a new café/bar. Nearby pubs have even been drawn into the story – with The Three Tuns jokingly designated ‘Block 6’, a nod to its potential as a post-work hotspot. But this is more than a light-hearted rebrand. Pennine Five is fast establishing itself as a key innovation hub within the Sheffield Innovation Spine, and a place where businesses, researchers, students and the wider public are encouraged not just to work, but to connect.
SO, WHAT IS THE SHEFFIELD INNOVATION SPINE?
The Sheffield Innovation Spine is an ambitious, city-shaping project designed to link together the city centre’s innovation infrastructure and create the conditions for knowledge-led businesses to start, scale and stay in Sheffield. Pennine Five sits squarely within that vision.
Charlotte Thompson, appointed Project Director for the Spine, in October 2024, says it places an emphasis on “delivering the spaces and place for our innovative businesses”, particularly in sectors where Sheffield and South Yorkshire have genuine competitive strength – deep tech and physical science, health and wellbeing, digital, creative industries and clean energy.
A core principle is density. By clustering businesses, researchers and institutions together, the aim is to increase connectivity, collaboration and what Charlotte calls ‘bumpability’ – the chance encounters that happen when people share spaces, cafés and routes through the city. “The aim is to create these hot spots within the city centre that are hyper-local,” she adds. “But they also sit within wider neighbourhoods that make a great place to live, work and play.”
Pennine Five represents one of those spaces, referred to as 'innovation hubs', and that is already reflected in its fast-growing tenant mix, with several University of Sheffield spin-outs choosing to locate on the campus. “We’re already seeing that traction,” notes Charlotte, adding that the wider ambition is to encourage businesses, researchers and public organisations to form collaborative clusters that benefit both the campus and the city around it.
Importantly, the Spine prioritises refurbishment and retrofit over demolition, for sustainability reasons and for flexibility. Pennine Five is a textbook example of that approach – an existing asset reworked to meet modern needs, rather than replaced.
A GROWING COMMUNITY
For much of the last decade, Pennine Five’s buildings sat largely empty. Today, they are steadily filling up. Flexible workspace provider Spaces, operated by IWG, is based in Block 2 and is now around 75 percent occupied. Other tenants are spread across Blocks 3, 4 and 5, with Block 1 set to become the flagship building once funding is secured.
Among the businesses already on site is FourJaw Manufacturing, which has established its headquarters at Pennine Five, placing itself at the heart of Sheffield’s growing tech ecosystem with an office overlooking the central plaza.
Phlux Technology, another tenant and a University of Sheffield spin-out, specialises in advanced infrared sensor technology, while Exciting Instruments is developing a single-molecule detection platform that simplifies complex biological research for drug discovery and diagnostics. The company recently secured major funding and opened new labs for its affordable, high-throughput technology, adding further weight to Pennine Five’s life sciences and deep-tech credentials.
The campus is also home to Venture Community, The Sheffield College and training provider First Intuition, reinforcing the idea that this is not a single-sector site, but a mixed ecosystem where education, enterprise and support services sit side by side.
For Christina Staniforth, Campus and Business Development Manager at P5, the next phase is about momentum. “My role at Pennine 5 is to look after existing tenants as well as attract new ones,” she tells unLTD. “This year is hugely exciting for us, as we are focussing on activating the campus with a variety of events, attracting the right mix of tenants and opening up our flagship Block 1. We have already had interest from overseas – and are looking for the funding and investment to complete the vision.”
If the Innovation Spine is about more than buildings, it’s important to understand that community does not form by accident. As Charlotte points out, you “cannot rely on building fabric alone”. Programming, events and considered activation matter just as much.
As such, P5 has already hosted business, investor and civic events, alongside community-led meet-ups, including regular AI sessions. The central plaza acts as a natural gathering point, while ground-floor uses bring footfall through the campus. “The plaza creates a natural serendipity point,” Charlotte says, and the more it is used, the more alive the site becomes.
Accessibility is another defining feature. The campus is fully accessible, a significant investment in a set of buildings that pre-date modern accessibility standards. It would have been cheaper not to do it, but it reflects a broader commitment to inclusive design and participation.
Charlotte is clear on long-term ambitions for the campus. “The vision is that it operates as an innovation hub. To thrive it would be a fully occupied hub that has that FOMO effect, where people really want to be there.” Success, she argues, is when Sheffield has multiple such hubs across the city, supporting work, living and leisure, thereby generating higher-quality jobs for people already living in South Yorkshire.
DISCOVERY: A NEW SPACE FOR SHARING FOOD, DRINKS AND IDEAS
One of the most tangible signs of Pennine Five’s evolution is Discovery, the flagship café-bar from Scrannery, opening on the campus in early March. More than just a place to grab a coffee, Discovery has been designed as a social and intellectual anchor for the site — somewhere ideas can be tested, conversations started, and different parts of the innovation community brought together.
“We said it needs to be more than just a café-bar,” he explains. “Because of the Innovation Spine and being part of the Pennine Five campus, how do we bring some of this stuff together?” The name Discovery is deliberate. “If you go through that innovation process, it all starts with that discovery moment.”
The space itself is flexible and carefully thought through. There is a main floor that can be segmented for events of up to 50 people, quieter snug rooms suitable for meetings or podcasting and a studio space that can be reconfigured for everything from board meetings and private dining to yoga or tai-chi. Local artist Jo Peel’s work features on the walls, grounding the space firmly in the local creative scene.
Food and drink follow a similar philosophy – quality, social value and no unnecessary fuss. Discovery will continue The Scrannery’s partnership with Redemption Roasters, which works with young offenders to retrain and support them back into employment. The kitchen focuses on baking, roasting and smoking, with menus designed to feel generous and unfussy rather than trend-led. “This is Sheffield,” Dave laughs. “Sheffield doesn’t really do fads; it just focuses on quality produce and doing a job well.”
Open to the public as well as campus tenants, Discovery looks out over the plaza from Block 4, visually and symbolically opening Pennine Five up to the wider city. Evening openings from Wednesday to Friday will add life beyond the working day, while remaining deliberately calm and considered.
For Dave, innovation is not just about technology. “It’s about how you innovate around communities, around culture, around the environment,” he says. “That’s what gets me interested about what Sheffield is doing, which I don’t think I’ve seen in many other places.”
LOOKING AHEAD
It’s important to note that Pennine Five is still a work in progress. Block 1 is yet to open, and parts of the campus remain under-occupied. But that sense of potential is part of its appeal. “If you went back 12 or 18 months, you could see the potential,” Dave reflects. “Now we’re here, you can feel it. You can feel the buzz.”
In five years’ time, he believes Pennine Five could be a flagship campus not just for Sheffield, but as a model for other cities. “There’s enough space here to test out any idea possible,” he says. “Why not use this as a blueprint for how you bring businesses, people and communities together in one place?”
For more information, visit penninefive.com.
