There was uproar in the north-west’s scientific community when the UK government announced, in March 2000, that it was going to build its £300m ($415m) third-generation Diamond synchrotron radiation source (SRS) machine at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, rather than on the site of its existing machine at Daresbury in Cheshire.

Daresbury’s SRS machine, which produced beams of light so intense that they could reveal the structure of atoms and molecules, was the first of its kind in the world. During nearly 30 years it had pioneered cutting-edge research in physics, chemistry and material sciences which had led to scientific breakthroughs in areas such as cleaner fuel, safer aircraft and new medicines.