Claverton Campus

The campus is set high above the city on Claverton Down within an acutely sensitive historic landscape defined by the World Heritage Site, the Chilterns AONB and Green Belt.   Its unique character and quality is an essential part of the University’s identity and appeal to students, staff and partners alike.  

The Masterplan provides a vision of the future for the Claverton Campus.  It seeks to enable the delivery of the development and infrastructure required to facilitate its sustainable growth in a manner that ensures the University can remain a diligent custodian of the landscape.   It also begins to address the challenge of transitioning to a net zero carbon campus following the University’s declaration of a climate emergency in 2020.

It is comprised of complementary building, movement, sport and green infrastructure strategies which enable the delivery of the academic and residential accommodation and infrastructure as and when required, whilst also protecting and enhancing the overall functionality and unique beauty of the campus.

The University recognises that the built development elements will need to be sensitively designed to take account of the landscape, heritage and ecological sensitivities.  Detailed environmental assessments and consultation with stakeholders has allowed the emerging proposals to be refined, key parameters for the extent and scale of the proposed built form to be defined and the development capacity tested in three dimensions.

The Masterplan has been prepared in collaboration with Bath & North East Somerset Council.   Campus masterplanning and planning policy matters have become ever more intertwined and complex and it responds to the current policy context by providing a clear understanding of the key environmental constraints and the remaining capacity for development within the University’s estate.  However, it now also underpins the new policies in the Council’s emerging Local Plan to provide a positive policy context for its implementation through determination of future planning applications that has been missing to date.

Work has now started on the first of those planning applications to provide a new 3G multi-purpose pitch, uniquely in this country constructed of recyclable materials, alongside student accommodation providing 500 bed-spaces.