The new sports university backed by Manchester United’s ‘Class of 92’ is on the verge of submitting the planning application for its campus this month, our North West Universities Development Plans Conference has heard. Yvonne Harrison, Managing Director of Project ’92, outlined the plans for UA92. She said that the former Kellogg UK headquarters building on Talbot Rd, which is next to Lancashire County Cricket ground in Old Trafford and close to the Manchester United’s stadium, will house the university’s main building.

Microsoft have signed up to share the building with UA92, which is being led by former Manchester United player Gary Neville and is designed to offer life skills training as well as more conventional courses.

The building will be remodelled to make better use of its internal space, principally by reducing the size of its atrium. A new multi-storey car park could also liberate the surrounding site’s extensive surface for redevelopment.

Harrison said: “We want our environment to be quite edgy, pushing boundaries and attracting a wider range of students than who come through the doors (of universities) at the moment.”

She said work was due to begin this September and complete by June next year with Microsoft and UA92 both due to open their doors in October 2020. The university aims to take in 675 students in its first intake, rising to 5,000 after five years.

Dr John Hindley, Assistant Director of Estates Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, told the conference that both its estate masterplan investment programme and 2017-2027 estate strategy have recently been approved.

Amongst the projects to be delivered in the £400m estates programme is the university’s flagship new 12,000 sq m Arts and Humanities building, which is due to be completed by January 2020.

The University is also planning to redevelop its John Dalton Science and Engineering Centre

He said the university is also planning to redevelop its John Dalton Science and Engineering centre, which is due to open in 2023. The plans will create an additional 2,500 sq m of floorspace, whilst boasting an open space fronting onto Oxford Road which would enable the university to ‘make a statement of the Mancunian Way’.

The university’s development pipeline also included 15,000 sq m of student accommodation containing 480 en-suite bedrooms.

Julie Charge, Executive Director of Finance at the University of Salford, warned that while the proportion of 18-year olds enrolling on higher education courses was increasing, institutions are contending with a decline in the size of this age group which is set to continue until 2021/22. She said: “It gets tougher and more competitive until it gets better.”

Paul Morris, Director of Estates at Lancaster University, told the conference that the institution is currently developing its new estates document, which includes plans to revamp its 1970s campus.

The University is also considering whether to install a second wind turbine, with the current one in place producing 12% of the campus’ electricity, paying for itself in just over five years.

Amongst the other projects in the university’s estate pipeline is phase two of the £37m Health Innovation Campus.

The university is also a key partner in plans to develop a garden village, one of fourteen being brought forward under a government programme, in the Bailrigg area on the outskirts of Lancaster. The plans would see a 3,500 settlement being created, but it would not proceed until capacity had been improved on the nearby J33 of the M6 which would serve the development for which funding has been secured.

These include the Spine Project that is designed to reinvigorate the main thoroughfare running through the campus from its Great Hall down to the George Fox building

He said that the university is also considering whether to install a second wind turbine. He said that the existing turbine now produced 12% of the campus’ electricity and has paid for itself in just over five years.

Amongst the other projects in the university’s estates pipeline included the £37m phase 2 of Lancaster’s Health Innovation Campus.

And Morris said that the university was also a key partner in plans to develop a garden village, one of 14 being brought forward under a government programme, in the Bailrigg area on the outskirts of Lancaster.

He said that the 3,500 home settlement would not proceed though until capacity had been improved on the nearby junction 33 of the M6 that will serve the development for which funding has been secured.