Unions criticised the ‘vanity project’ as being partly to blame for hundreds of job cuts
15:02, 28 Nov 2025Updated 15:29, 28 Nov 2025
Construction on the University of Nottingham’s Castle Meadow Campus pictured in October 2024(Image: Joseph Raynor/Nottingham Post)
The University of Nottingham is planning to sell the “vanity project” campus it has spent more than £80 million on just months after the latest part of it opened.
The institution has told staff that the only parts of the Castle Meadow Campus it occupies will be shut down in weeks, just four years after it first purchased the former HMRC offices.
Other university buildings could also face the axe as the financially struggling institution continues a “programme of work to identify underutilised buildings” across its campus.
The university says it now faces £100 million of costs every year to operate its estate and that this figure is “not sustainable” – with the institution having already announced the planned sale of the King’s Meadow Campus earlier this year.
Unions have long criticised the university’s development of the Castle Meadow Campus, which it was only supposed to spend £45 million on over the first 10 years, and have said it is partly to blame for hundreds of job cuts at the institution.
News of the planned sale was confirmed in a message to staff on Wednesday (November 26) from Gary Moss, the university’s director of estates and facilities.
A University of Nottingham spokesperson confirmed: “We bought Castle Meadow Campus (CMC) when the university planned to grow and expand its footprint in the city centre and develop new opportunities for teaching, research and partnership activity.
“However, the financial landscape for Nottingham and the wider sector has changed.
“While we are making difficult decisions on re-sizing our workforce and reducing our curriculum we cannot commit ongoing budget to spaces and buildings which no longer align to our strategic priorities.
“Selling CMC would reduce our operating costs and allow us to redirect resource into providing a world-class teaching and research environment for our staff and students.”
The news comes days after it was confirmed that the University of Nottingham was pressing ahead with plans to axe several courses, despite MPs warning of the “profound impact” it could have on the city.
The Russell Group university first purchased HMRC’s Castle Meadow tax offices off Wilford Road for £37.5 million back in 2021, before outlining plans to transform it into an “enterprise campus” that could bring together academic research and businesses.
The university was forced to admit that it had spent more than £80 million on buying and redeveloping the site, after initially attempting to block the release of this embarrassing information.
Development of the site was supposed to begin in 2023 and be mostly done by late 2024, with the accountancy firm KPMG set to take over some space.
The main campus welcome point was then intended to open in the summer of 2024 before the rest of the campus followed towards the end of the year, with the building set to be the future home of the university’s business school.
Yet KMPG ended up abandoning plans to locate at the site and only two buildings there are currently occupied by the university, both of which will now shut within weeks.
The main Central Building opened in September and is being operated by a university subsidiary, Nottingham Venues, as an event venue with a public cafe and that is one of the spaces now closing.
The university’s Innovation Park was also using part of the site, but that building will also close within weeks.
The University of Nottingham’s Castle Meadow campus, pictured in July 2023(Image: Joseph Raynor/ Nottingham Post)
Two external tenants, Arden University and Nottingham College, are also based at the campus and Mr Moss said in his message to staff that they “will remain on site as sitting tenants while the plans for the sale progress.”
A mixture of increased spending and lower numbers of lucrative international students resulted in a £17 million loss for the university last year, with bosses in April announcing large-scale job cuts as part of its ‘Future Nottingham’ restructuring.
Mr Moss said in his message to staff: “Over the past 18 months through its Future Nottingham programme, the university has been developing a clear set of proposals to guide the size and shape of our organisation, allowing us to respond robustly to the challenges facing the UK higher education sector and safeguard our future.
“Through rightsizing our workforce, reducing our non-pay costs and growing our commercial income, our ambition is to be able to deliver a 5% annual surplus by 29/30.
“Key to this is the programme of work to shrink our non-residential estate by 20%. This will reduce our operating costs and also give us headroom while we are still spending more than we earn.
“Nottingham has evolved into one of the largest university estates in the country, with an annual operating cost of around £100m.
“This is not sustainable, and we need to refocus on developing our estate to deliver an excellent teaching and research environment while supporting our ambitious plans for investment into strategic areas of excellence.”