'Transformative' campus and station entrance opens

A "transformative" £500m university campus and new entrance to major railway station have officially opened.

Bristol Temple Meads' £23m eastern entrance was unveiled earlier, as part of a major redevelopment of the area led by the opening of a new University of Bristol campus.

For decades, much of the land on the site was dominated by old industrial buildings and the former Royal Mail sorting office, which Tony Dyer, leader of Bristol City Council, said were "not a good advertisement for the city".

Professor Judith Squires, the university's deputy vice-chancellor, said the regeneration would be "transformative" for Bristol.

Bristol University's new Sloane Robinson building, at the heart of the redevelopment, will specialise in AI, cyber security and new technologies.

Squires, the university's lead for the new campus, said she wanted the site to be a collaborative space where different communities could be at the "cutting edge of research".

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The development, she added, represented one of the most ambitious urban regeneration programmes in the UK.

One of the aims of the new site was to open more publicly accessible spaces, including areas for passengers of the station and the wider community in east Bristol to use.

Helen Godwin, West of England Mayor, said "people see Temple Meads as this gorgeous Brunel building" but "in its current form I don't think it worked that well for everyone".

Network Rail estimates some 2.5m passengers a year will use the new entrance by 2030 [BBC]

The new buildings mark the start of a wider regenerative scheme by the West of England Combined Authority (Weca) and Bristol City Council, which they say will create thousands of new homes and jobs.

"This is the opening of the floodgates of what's to come next," Godwin added, explaining that the new eastern entrance at Bristol Temple Meads would play an important role for residents.

Leaders from across the city officially opened the new station entrance earlier [BBC]

The eastern entrance is the first of three new access points to the railway station, with Network Rail expecting some 2.5m passengers each year to use it by 2030.

Construction began in late 2023 and involved redesigning two of the station's platforms.

From the 8 September the number 8 bus - which links Bristol Temple Meads with the city centre and Clifton, where the University of Bristol is based - will serve the station's eastern entrance.

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