University ditches £51m campus accommodation plans

A £51m plan to build university accommodation and a sports centre has been ditched, it has been announced.

The University of Kent has confirmed its proposed development for 1,000 students on its Canterbury campus will no longer go ahead.

The university is pressing ahead with plans for 2,000 homes on another part of its estate, despite Canterbury City Council (CCC) withdrawing the land from its latest draft Local Plan.

Steph Jupe, who represents Blean Forest on CCC, said it was "an outrageous lack of consistency and a disappointingly belligerent attitude towards their neighbours who have overwhelmingly come out to oppose the building of nearly 2,000 homes".

In 2020, the university announced its intentions to build a complex made up of student accommodation, a squash centre and a sports pavilion on its Canterbury campus, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

CCC gave planning permission for the complex in August 2023, however no works have taken place since, with the university spokesperson citing higher construction costs and higher interest rates on borrowing since 2020 as having affected the scheme's feasibility.

In May 2024, it was then revealed that the university had put forward a large tract of land it owns north of its campus as a site for a new settlement of 2,000 homes as part of CCC's local plan.

And while CCC later said it would no longer be considering that site due to technical challenges, the institution said it would proceed with the project anyway.

The proposal has attracted opposition and spurred the creation of an opposition campaign group Save the Blean.

Jupe said: "CCC did not endorse the site in the current Local Plan based on evidence showing that a huge scale of building would be inappropriate and impractical, why is this being ignored?"

Further details about what the future holds for the land have not been disclosed.

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