Why the Central Teaching Laboratories matter

The new building is a major investment in the future of education at the University. It will bring together practical teaching currently delivered across a number of older and more fragmented spaces, helping to create a more consistent experience for students and better facilities for the academic and technical teams who support them.

The project is part of our wider future campus plans: creating a more compact, efficient and sustainable estate, while focusing investment where it will have the greatest long-term impact.

Our existing facilities continue to support high-quality teaching, but many were designed for a different era. Teaching methods, technology, equipment needs and student expectations have changed. The Central Teaching Laboratories will give future students access to spaces designed around how practical teaching works now, and how it will need to evolve in the years ahead.

Supporting the future of science and health teaching

Practical teaching is essential to many of our science, health and related subjects. Students need spaces where they can learn safely, work collaboratively, use modern equipment and connect what they learn in lectures with hands-on experience.

The Central Teaching Laboratories will support the long-term strength of lab-based education at Sheffield. By bringing practical teaching into a purpose-designed facility, the new building will help us provide a more consistent student experience, make better use of specialist equipment and create spaces that can adapt as teaching changes over time.

A cornerstone of our future campus plans

The Central Teaching Laboratories project was first developed before the University’s wider Future Campus work began. When that work started, the project was paused so it could be reviewed alongside our wider estate, teaching, financial and sustainability priorities.

That review strengthened the case for the new building. It confirmed that bringing practical science, health and related teaching together in a purpose-designed facility remains the right long-term approach for Sheffield.

The new building is also an important early step in the wider Future Campus programme. It will replace teaching currently delivered across a number of older and more fragmented laboratory spaces, creating opportunities to reduce reliance on facilities that are harder to upgrade, maintain and use consistently.

By consolidating practical teaching in a modern central facility, the project helps unlock future changes across the estate. It supports the wider ambition to create a more compact, efficient and sustainable campus, with investment focused where it will have the greatest long-term impact for students, staff and the University.

Why not just refurbish existing spaces?

Refurbishment is an important part of our approach to campus. Across the estate, we will continue to improve and adapt existing buildings where that is the right solution.

As part of the review of this project, the University has looked carefully at whether existing teaching laboratory spaces could be refurbished instead. However, the current spaces are spread across several buildings, many with physical and technical constraints that would make major upgrades complex, costly and highly disruptive. A refurbishment-only approach would also require a long programme of temporary moves and relocations to keep teaching running while works took place which could potentially take up to a decade to complete.

It would also limit the opportunity to rethink how practical teaching is delivered. Refurbishment could improve some individual spaces, but would not create the same flexibility, consistency or shared environment needed to support new approaches to teaching across science, health and related subjects.

The new building provides a clearer long-term solution. It allows us to design practical teaching spaces around current and future needs, while also creating opportunities to improve the wider estate over time by freeing up existing laboratory spaces for new uses.

A careful investment in the University’s future

We recognise that this is a major investment at a challenging time for the University and the wider higher education sector. That is why the project has been carefully reviewed as part of our future campus planning.

The decision to progress the Central Teaching Laboratories is not about creating a new building for its own sake. It is about investing in facilities that are essential to our academic mission: excellent teaching, a strong student experience and the future of practical science and health education at Sheffield.

By creating modern, efficient and flexible teaching laboratories, the University can reduce reliance on ageing and fragmented spaces, support more sustainable ways of working and provide facilities that will serve students and staff for decades to come.