I am very pleased to be able to share that over the past few months we have completed our ambitious accommodation acquisition programme, funded by the bond we took out for this purpose in January 2020.
We have purchased three new properties in Oxford and created additional student bedrooms in some of the attic space on the main College site. This means that from September this year, we will be able to accommodate a further 53 students, increasing our accommodation offering by 25%. We can now accommodate all first-year students, and, for the first time, we will also be able to offer accommodation to some second- and third-year students.
More about the properties
We have purchased 203 Iffley Road, next to three other Linacre properties, and refurbished it to contain 10 study bedrooms. This building has already been opened to our students and is very handily placed to create a small cluster of Linacre off-site houses.
We have also, in rapid succession, brought long and complicated negotiations to a conclusion around two other properties. We have bought a 26-bed purpose-built student block on Union Street from St Hilda’s College that Linacre students will be able to move into in September. And, excitingly, we were also able to purchase a property from Ruskin College up in Old Headington, adjacent to the JR hospital. This property contains 12 ensuite rooms and two large seminar rooms, as well as some academic space. The building, dating largely from 1883 but also containing a seventeenth century cottage (which currently needs some refurbishment) should be very useful to College for accommodating students working in the Headington laboratories, but also for hosting seminars and some conferences. The site should help to diversify College’s operations and income sources, allowing us to continue to expand and offer ever better facilities to our students.
David Seale Finance Bursar
