New £5.5million extension set to welcome first students through the doors


Students heading to De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) this term will be the first to step through the doors of a four-storey extension on campus.

Named by the faculty ‘The Yard’, the £5.5million extension to the Hugh Aston Building provides more than 22,000 square metres of additional learning space.

YARDY (1)

The new building is part of a continuous drive to develop the Leicester Castle Business School, as well as providing an inspiring working environment for students.

In addition to much-needed extra learning space and resources the extension also features a space for commercial activities and a luxury balcony on the top floor overlooking campus.

Umesh Desai Director of Estates said: “It’s a new building that is required to deal with an increasing amount in numbers of Business and Law students. 

“We needed to create additional self-study space and teaching accommodation, the two buildings are connected on the ground floor and we have moved the student support centre in there too.”

He continued: “We started building in June 2019, and originally, pre-COVID, the plan was that it would be finished by May 2020. However, with the closure of construction sites for a period of time, that wasn’t possible, so we had to put a pause on timescales.

“We were fortunate enough to work together with Clegg Construction to get the site back up and running in June 2020, in a COVID-compliant manner.

“We have an independent safety consultant who monitored all the building work for us to make sure everything was fully compliant, and everyone was kept safe.”

YARDY (2)

The new building will be ready to welcome students in the coming weeks.

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Umesh said: “Despite only just being completed we have ensured all the social distancing measures that are around the rest of the campus have been incorporated into this building.

“The new building is fully equipped with all the one-way systems, hand-sanitiser points, enhanced cleaning measures and more.”

 He added: “The project has been completed exceptionally well and I am really pleased how the project has turned out.”

YARDY (3)

DMU is already on to the next project, taking this opportunity to refurbish the café in the Hugh Aston building too.

 “We are also taking the opportunity working with Chartwells to completely refurbish the café, starting immediately, we want to refresh and refurbish the whole space.

“This will include removing the internal door into Hugh Aston creating a seamless link into the newly enlarged student study area, providing much needed additional seating capacity.

“We have also taken the opportunity to rename the Newarke Café to the Coffee House. It’s something different, fresh and new. I am quite excited about all of this, it’s something that will benefit the faculty and wider university tremendously,” he continued.

Posted on Thursday 27 August 2020

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