University rejects a town site (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

University rejects a town site

Swindon Civic Trust spokesman Alan HaywardTHE GREAT DEBATE: PLANS to build a university campus in Swindon town centre have been rejected by the University of Bath.

Swindon Civic Trust submitted plans to the university in January.

The SCT claimed Swindon town centre could easily accommodate a university campus and that the council needed to make the land available and save Coate.

But the University of Bath has rejected the plans, saying that a distributed campus was not in line with its plans.

At a meeting to discuss the proposal, the University of Bath said: "The executive committee concluded it was not appropriate for the university to develop in the way proposed by the Swindon Civic Trust, particularly because a distributed campus was incompatible with the current brand of the university and would be very costly."

They unanimously ruled out the possibility of a town centre campus as an alternative to Coate.

But the SCT claims the university ignored one of the options, which was not to have a distributed campus, but to accommodate the majority of the university's requirements in the North Star area.

This had been the original location when plans for a campus were first discussed back in 2001.

Trust spokesman Alan Hayward said: "This confirms our view that the university is not interested in being part of Swindon

"It is purely using our town and our open countryside at Coate as a vehicle for its own commercial ambitions.

"The University of Bath brand is obviously more important to them than a University of Swindon one."

However, Mr Hayward said the university did not dispute the fact that a campus could be accommodated in the town centre.

"What is also now clear is that the trust was right in the proposal in that any campus can be accommodated in the town centre as the university's council did not dispute this," said Mr Hayward.

"This completely undermines the reason for building at Coate and shows that Government planning policy guide-lines have been flouted and that the university's sequential testing reports are just incorrect."

The university has long said that the Coate site is the only place in Swindon that is suitable for its campus.

And it says it will not consider building anywhere else.

No one from the University of Bath was available to comment.

Stephanie Tye