University Council is seeking approval of its plans to build a new Cavendish Laboratory in West Cambridge.

The plans, announced in a first-stage report in the 15th February edition of the University Reporter,  would involve the demolition of “ageing and inflexible” accommodation in six buildings which form part of the current Cavendish Laboratory site. According to the briefing, they would be replaced by “a new, integrated research and teaching building”, nicknamed Cavendish III.

It is hoped that the new building will be successful in “offering unrivalled facilities for the benefit and advance of research in Cambridge and in the UK”, and becoming a “world leading national facility for physics.” The building, with an internal area of 33,000 square metres, will house specialist laboratories, workshops, offices and teaching facilities, including teaching laboratories, seminar rooms, and two lecture theatres.

According to the report, Cavendish III is part of a wider plan to create a “Physical Science and Technology campus” at the West Cambridge site. The redevelopments would mean that the Department of Engineering would be wholly located at the site, with some of its infrastructure moving to the existing site of the Cavendish Laboratory. There are further plans to begin construction on a Civil Engineering building, which will house the Department’s Geotechnical and Structures research, as well as the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing. The building would provide space for research workspace and laboratories, replacing the current ageing facilities at Trumpington Street.

The capital cost of the project has been estimated at £300 million, £75 million of which will be covered by a government investment which was announced in the Autumn Statement of 2015. The University is anticipated to match this investment with its own cash contribution of equal size. A further £150 million will come in the form of a philanthropic donation made to the Department of Physics. However, because “the terms around the specific purpose and timing of this gift are still under discussion,” the University has agreed to underwrite the gift in order to enable the project to progress.

Asked to elaborate, the University told Varsity: “At the donor’s request, all details relating to the potential gift are confidential. Donors almost always specify the particular purpose for their donations.”

New furniture and equipment for the building, as well as transferring existing facilities from the old buildings, is projected to cost a further £15 million, covered by the Department of Physics’ own funds.

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Included in the buildings set to be demolished is a multi-faith chaplaincy centre, which is to be relocated to an alternative site nearby.

A spokesperson for the University told Varsity: “We do not expect there to be any inconvenience to users of the Chaplaincy Centre.”

There has been a laboratory at the Cavendish site, situated on JJ Thompson Avenue, since 1974, when the original Cavendish laboratory moved out of its original home in central Cambridge. However, ageing infrastructure means that further redevelopment is necessary in order to “meet the challenges of the 21st century,” according to the laboratory’s website. The report submitted to the University Council stressed that “a key objective is to create facilities which are sufficiently flexible and adaptable to meet the needs of Physics research for the next 50 years.”

The plans are due to be discussed in the Senate House on the 7th March