Plans approved for new £50m health and life sciences facility at the University of Reading

Plans for building a new £50m health and life sciences facility have been given the green light, a recent news report in the local media has been able to suggest.

Both Wokingham and Reading borough councils have approved the application for a four-storey building; the creation of a new entrance and external works to the Philip Lyle Building; and associated landscaping and car parking at Whiteknights campus.

The new building will provide a purpose-built teaching and research facility for the School of Biological Sciences, and a new flexible design will enable labs to teach groups of up to 280, making it one of the largest teaching labs in the UK.

The facility will provide more than 81,000 sq ft of lab and teaching space, and will feature two dedicated floors for wet and dry research laboratories catering for up to 95 academic researchers and 145 doctoral students. The new building will also become the new site of the Cole Museum of Zoology.

"We are pleased to receive planning permission to create a new home for our life sciences work, and we are grateful to Wokingham and Reading Borough Councils for the go ahead," said Colin Robbins, director of estates and facilities.

"The project forms part of our ambitious capital investment programme 2026: TRANSFORM. Once the new building is completed, we will be redeveloping other parts of the Whiteknights Campus to continue to provide the highest quality experience for teaching and research."

Construction of the new facility, which will be built on the site of the engineering building, is expected to be complete by summer 2019. The existing engineering building will be demolished, alongside Knight and Harborne buildings and the AMS Tower.

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