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UCL to explore plans for additional campus in London Borough of Newham

23 November 2011

UCL and London Borough of Newham have today announced that they are working in partnership to explore opportunities for an additional UCL campus in Stratford.

UCL to explore plans for additional campus in London Borough of Newham  

Under the terms of the agreement signed by UCL and Newham, both parties now have six months to develop proposals for the site, which is within the Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood, east of the Olympic Park. If the proposals go ahead it is likely that UCL will develop a significant presence in Stratford over the next 5 years.

Some of the drivers for this opportunity are:

  • The growth strategy of the recently-published UCL Council White Paper. While implementation of the Bloomsbury Masterplan will accommodate some of this growth in the short to medium term, our central London location offers very limited capacity for the longer term. The opportunities to meet the growing demand for space to support the development of world-class teaching and research are extremely constrained
  • Stratford, and more specifically the Carpenters Estate, offers particular opportunities and benefits for UCL associated with the Olympic legacy, scale, value and affordability and, importantly, accessibility - Stratford is just 6 minutes from St Pancras on the Javelin service, and Crossrail will provide a fast direct link from Tottenham Court Road.
  • A UCL presence in Stratford would significantly boost regeneration in the area whilst enhancing the long term sustainability and growth of the university and helping to deliver the Olympic legacy. Our ethos of promoting public benefit and widening opportunity - and our modern-day leadership in fields such as health, engineering, architecture and sustainable development - make us an ideal regeneration partner.
  • We believe that our involvement would deliver significant economic and social benefits. We would seek to improve opportunity and raise aspiration for higher education in Stratford. UCL is already a major London employer, and an additional campus at Stratford would provide jobs across a wide range of sectors. It would also act as a magnet for small, medium and large scale businesses wishing to co-locate with a leading research institution.

Professor Malcolm Grant, UCL President and Provost said:

"The Carpenters Neighbourhood proposal represents a great opportunity for UCL, creating an additional campus at the heart of the Olympic Legacy with excellent transport links to our existing facilities."

"We are developing ideas with the UCL community about the facilities that might be located in Stratford. Although we are still at a very early stage, we anticipate that they might include a mixture of student and staff accommodation, research, teaching and business and community engagement."

"We will be working with our staff and students to prepare these plans, and we want to foster innovation, inter-disciplinarity and a constant cross-flow of activity and ideas between Stratford and Bloomsbury. To this end an internal 'New Campus Academic Stakeholder Group' made up of faculty Deans, other senior academics and key support service staff has been established. This group will meet regularly over the coming months to gather ideas from around UCL and to develop initial proposals."

We anticipate that at the end of the agreed six month period, proposals will be submitted to the UCL Council, and to the Mayor of Newham and Cabinet. Any decision to proceed further will then be dependent on the agreement of both parties.

For further information read the UCL / Newham press release and these FAQs.