Leicester University plans £30m medical training school
By fiona dryden education correspondent
A £30 million medical school could be built in Leicester to help the city attract the UK's finest students.
Leicester University is planning to replace its older medical training centre with a new building – paid for by loans, university reserves and NHS cash.
University bosses hope the new centre will help them attract top calibre students who will remain in the city once they graduate.
Professor Stewart Peterson, the university's head of medical and social care education, said: "We want to attract the best medical students.
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"We're also acutely aware that students want the best facilities and value for money when being charged £9,000 fees."
Plans for the new building, on the corner of University Road and Lancaster Road, are due to be submitted to Leicester City Council this month.
If they are approved, it could be ready for September 2013, when the university's 1,300 medical students will move in.
Dr Kevin Harris, medical director at Leicester's hospitals, said: "This can only be good news for us and our patients.
"The University of Leicester's medical school is already one of the biggest and most prestigious in the country, attracting a high calibre of medical students, who spend time with us when they train.
"We know that many students choose to stay in the city where they trained, which means Leicester's hospitals have a large pool of trained doctors to recruit from."
The medical school will house teaching rooms, computer laboratories and offices. It will be set back from the road so as not to obscure views of the nearby War Memorial in Victoria Park.
Grant Charman, deputy director of estates at the university, said the aim was to make the school as environmentally friendly as possible.
He said: "Our carbon footprint will be tremendously reduced by this exciting project."
Once the new building is opened, the former school in University Road, built in the 1970s, will be refurbished, potentially to become a research centre.
The project is also set to benefit Regent College, which owns the land upon which the new medical school could be built.
College bosses have agreed in principle to sell off a section of its land to the university for an undisclosed sum. They will use the cash to pay for a sports hall, changing rooms, new classrooms and a pitch.
The college had plans for a £14 million refurbishment, but funding fell through.
Paul Wilson, college principal, said: "It came as a big blow when we couldn't pursue our plans. This provides an exciting opportunity to progress them on a smaller scale.
"The college has never had an indoor sports facility and we want to develop our sports curriculum to the highest standard. This will allow us to build fantastic facilities at Regent College."
If agreed, work could start in January at Regent College and should take a year to complete.
The University of Leicester has invested £50 million in the last three years in providing, among other projects, a redeveloped library and Students' Union. In April, it announced a £12.6 million cardiovascular research centre.
