The new student garden is nearly ready

On 17 May, we held a ‘Investing in a Better Campus’ webinar, where we presented our exciting plans for the West Slope development as well as plans to improve our Library provision and enhance the student experience. Thank you to everyone who attended - we received great feedback so if you missed the webinar, you can catch it again online.

As you may have seen, work is starting to get underway to prepare our campus for our new West Slope development. To start making more space available, one task has been to move some existing facilities to new locations. We are finishing off work on a new student garden, which will be ready for our keen student gardeners and Roots Society to start planting by the end of the month. We are also building a brand-new children’s playground and basketball court behind Northfield residences, which will replace, and much improve on, the current provision. Both these new spaces will be ready for use in July. Over the summer we have plans to move further services out of the West Slope area and we will keep you up to date as work progresses.

We are also working hard to prepare our utilities under the ground, making sure that they can support our new development as well as existing buildings and futureproof them for decades to come. This is a large project that will take place over the next year. Work was due to start at the beginning of May, but was postponed whilst further planning preparations were undertaken to minimise the amount disruption on campus. Work will now start in mid-June in the following areas:

1. We are widening the footpath along Refectory Road (the section behind Kent House). The road will remain open to cars and buses, but the cycle lane along this section will be closed and pedestrians will be diverted. This work starts week commencing 13 June 2022.
2. A section of Northfield Lane (adjacent to Lewes Court residences) will be narrowed as work takes place to build a new bin store area. This work starts week commencing 13 June 2022.
3. The top half of Norwich House Road will be closed to vehicles from the 20 June 2022 so that utilities can be diverted and a new footpath built linking through to Jubilee Car Park. The footpath along Norwich House Road will remain open.
4. The grasscrete road alongside Lewes Court blocks 1 and 2 will be closed to all vehicles from the 27 June 2022. The footpath will remain open.
5. The main section of Car Park 8 is now closed, and the smaller car park next to it will be temporarily closed between the 13-15 June and permanently closed from the 24 June 2022. Lewes Court Car Park has reduced capacity but is still available for parking.