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Report of the Council on the construction of a new Faculty building for the School of Education: Notice

3 March 2003

The Council have considered the remarks made at the Discussion of the above Report on 10 December 2002 (p. 475). They have consulted the Treasurer and the Director of the Estate Management and Building Service and have agreed to respond as follows:

In response to Professor G. R. Evans's suggestion that the Estate Management and Building Service is running out of control, the Council note that all building projects only proceed following consideration and approval by the Resource Management Committee, the Planning and Resources Committee, and the Buildings Sub-committee. The formal Report is then considered by the Finance Committee before it is presented to the Council for approval and signature.

Professor Evans is incorrect in her assertion that drawings of the plans and elevations for the proposed Education building were not displayed in the Old Schools Arcade. These were in fact displayed from the time of the publication of the Report in November 2002 and are still on display. In accordance with the convergence agreement between the University's School of Education and Homerton College, it was agreed that the new Department would be concentrated on the Homerton College Site. This meant that a new building was necessary at that Site and a space requirement study was undertaken as a result. Although this is a usual step in the process of considering proposals for new buildings it has not been common practice to make such studies available to the Regent House.

In response to her comments on money spent before a Report has been approved, any expenditure on fees took place only on the authority of the relevant University committees. These committees received full reports on the process and programme for the provision of a new Education building at Homerton College.

A draft Report was prepared prior to submission for planning approval. It was, however, agreed that more detailed information was required before submission to the Finance Committee, and thus to the Council and to the University. That full and detailed information was not available for a considerable period of time and the planning submission was therefore made in advance of the final Report being published.

Professor Evans and Professor J. R. Spencer both comment on the funding and the position of the Land Fund and the Council respond to these points as follows:

As explained both in the Report on the construction of a new Faculty building for the School of Education (Reporter, p. 360) and in the Council's Notice in response to the remarks made at the Discussion of the Council's Report on the construction of new cancer research laboratories at the Addenbrooke's Hospital Site (Reporter, p. 342), the Land Fund is currently in deficit. Taking account of all agreed and proposed commitments, including those relating to the two projects referred to above, the deficit amounts to £12.15m. Interest is being charged on this amount. The Council referred in their above-mentioned Notice to anticipated income which was intended to bring that Fund back into credit over the next three years. Expected receipts for that Fund include an amount of £3m pledged by Hutchison Whampoa as a contribution towards land costs at Addenbrooke's (this is additional to the £13.5m contributed by that company to the cancer research laboratories), together with around £8m expected to be received on the sale of land at Milton Road later this year.

A further sum of £2.8m is anticipated from the sale of land at Addenbrooke's back to the NHS Trust for use by them for the construction of key worker houses.

Professor Spencer requested more information about the land to be sold at Milton Road. This land is not used by the University. There is currently one tenant, the Medical Research Council, who have a long leasehold interest in the former Dunn Nutrition Unit Site. They are negotiating to surrender the unexpired portion of their lease, which is a building lease granted in l966 for a 60-year period at a rent of £10 a year with a capital premium of £6,000.

Professor Evans referred again to the Treasurer accepting tenders. As explained in their Notice of 6 May 2002 (Reporter, 2001-02, p. 735), the Council are satisfied that the procedures in place are appropriate.

As indicated in the Council's Report on the new building for the School of Education, the main source of money to pay for this will be from the proceeds of the disposal of the buildings currently occupied by the Faculty of Education. As a result of a tender process, FPD Savills have now been appointed as agents to carry out this disposal. In addition to the buildings referred to in the Report, the Council now propose a further sale, of numbers 19, 21, and 22 Trumpington Street. These buildings currently house the offices of the Schools of Arts and Humanities, Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Physical Sciences, and parts of the Faculty of English, the Department of Engineering, and the Department of Social Anthropology. The three Schools offices and the staff of the Department of Social Anthropology are to be relocated to the former Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics building at Mill Lane. The staff of the Faculty of English are temporarily housed in Trumpington Street during construction of the Faculty's new building at West Road and will relocate once it is completed, and the staff of the Department of Engineering will relocate to premises rented by the Department at the Cambridge Science Park.

The Council are satisfied that the sale of the buildings listed in their Report together with the buildings referred to above will produce enough money to fund the new Education building in full. The Council, as announced in the Report, will publish a Notice setting out the agreed terms of any sale of these buildings. In addition, discussions are taking place in the central bodies about a possible application of SRIF2 (Science Research Investment Fund, Round 2) funding to the research element of this project. If this is agreed, it will release part of the proceeds of sale of the Trumpington Street houses as a credit to the Land Fund.

The Council have agreed to submit a Grace for the approval of the sale of numbers 19, 21, and 22 Trumpington Street (Grace 2, p. 688) together with a Grace for the approval of the recommendations in the Council's original Report (Grace 3, p. 688).


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Cambridge University Reporter 5 March 2003
Copyright © 2002 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.