What is the university doing?
The University of Durham is in partnership with the City Council to market and sell the land at Elvet Waterside.
In 1944 the University put a covenant on the land at Racecourse Park (former bowling green) and 800 yards of Riverbank to preserve the land for recreational use only, when the land was sold by the University to the City Council. Despite intensive campaigning and lobbying and the presentation of a petition with over 1,800 signatures on by concerned residents, students, graduates and visitors to the city appealing to the University not to revoke the covenant, the University Council decided to revoke the covenant on February 13th 2007.
We are very concerned that the University Council took this decision because:
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As the University is in partnership with the council, we feel that they were not in a position to make a dispassionate decision about the revocation of the covenant.
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Their support for any decision to build on public recreational land, threatening the views of a World Heritage Site, in the face of widespread public opposition reflects unfavourably on the University of Durham both locally and nationally
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The University may now have lost control of this site. If this particular development fails at the planning stage (which we believe it will) then the way could now be open for more unscrupulous development on this site and the riverbank in the future.