Councillors are to receive an update on progress of the University of Huddersfield’s £40 million Health & Wellbeing Academy.

The academy will be part of the National Health Innovation Campus being built on the site of the former Huddersfield Sports Centre and other buildings off Southgate and Leeds Road close to Huddersfield town centre.

Kirklees Council gave outline planning approval last August and the university design team will come back before the council’s Strategic Planning Committee on Thursday.

The detailed plans – about such as the access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale – have yet to be decided and the design team wants to hear councillors’ views.

A series of new computer-generated images, created by Huddersfield-based AHR Architects, have also been published. The main image above is the rear view. The front and interior images are in the gallery below.

The 2.67-acre site in Southgate has been split into seven plots with the “landmark” building – the Health & Wellbeing Academy – on the corner of Southgate and Leeds Road facing towards Huddersfield Railway Station.

READ MORE: What councillors said when outline permission was granted last year

The whole site is bordered by Leeds Road, Leeds Old Road and Crown House, a disused 1970s office block. The Health & Wellbeing Academy will take up about a fifth of the total site and while there will be no parking provision in phase one of the development, a 240-space multi-storey car park is planned later.

Little information is known about the other buildings. It was stated at a previous planning committee meeting that none of the other buildings would be above eight-storeys in height. For comparison Crown House is 11-storeys.

The academy will be the new home of the university’s School of Health & Human Sciences and would have classrooms, labs and specialist facilities including; a mock operating theatre; a ‘simbulance’ or mock ambulance; a mock house/flat to recreate home visits to patients; and a podiatry clinic and an orthotics (aids and devices such as splints and braces) clinic, both of which would be open to the public.

The new building is described as “contemporary” with a split-level height, mainly consisting of a seven-storey section and a four-storey section.

The four-storey section would be faced with natural stone while the seven-storey section would be in bronze-coloured “metal cassette cladding.” There will be a mezzanine level, several tiered roofs and a roof terrace/terrace garden.

Public consultation into the plans is open on the Kirklees Council planning website until June 12.

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