CONTROVERSIAL plans to sell-off valuable buildings at a South Lakeland university campus have been put on ice - the Westmorland Gazette can reveal.

In March last year the University of Cumbria announced intentions to flog assets in Ambleside and shift course provision to its facilities elsewhere in the county - angering students, lecturers and business leaders in the town.

However, the university’s new Vice-chancellor, Peter MacCaffery, who has been at the institution’s helm for around three weeks, has said any plans for a sell-off are now on hold and a rethink is needed.

“We are a disparate university with a number of sites and we have to review our campuses,” said Mr MacCaffery. “We need to look at what we are achieving before we decide that (sell facilities).

“In terms of Ambleside itself, I visited the campus recently and I think it is a stunning location, it is unique. The Lake District has 16 lakes and it would be odd if we didn’t have a lakeside siting. We have to think what can work best there,” he said.

Undergraduate learning has taken place in Ambleside since 1892 when a teacher training college was established by renowned educationalist Charlotte Mason.

Directors at the University of Cumbria - which formed in 2007 with the merger of St Martin’s College, the Cumbria Institute of the Arts, and the Cumbrian campuses of the University of Central Lancashire - last year announced they were to scrap undergraduate teaching at the South Lakeland town, and shifting Teacher Training and Outdoor Studies to the institute’s facilities in Carlisle, Newton Rigg, Penrith and Lancaster.

The scheme included raising cash by selling all its Ambleside properties outside the Rydal Road campus, including Fairfield playing fields, Hill Top, Fairfield Hall, Springfield and the former Kelsick Grammar School - all former St Martin’s College-owned buildings.

Mr MacCaffery said bosses at the university needed to explore their options of how best to use the facilities at Ambleside, which could could revolve around certain subjects, such as outdoor sports and business, though a sale of the buildings has still not been ruled out.

“There has traditionally been undergraduate provision there,” he said. “I see an opportunity in Ambleside to use the unique location for outdoor sport and a business school. We have to look at all these aspects. We have to look at working out a business case for Ambleside.”

Luke Connolly, a former student who studied at Ambleside and who launched an Internet campaign against the planned closure that gained the support of hundreds using the networking site Facebook, said he was pleased by the university’s management rethinking of the plan.

“It is good to see they are reconsidering their plans,” he said. “I had a meeting with them in May last year and and they were pressing ahead despite not having a business plan so it looks like they are doing it properly this time.”

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who has also called on the university bosses to change their minds, not least because of the detrimental affect he believes the scheme would have on the town’s economy, said he was encouraged by the Vice-chancellor’s comments.

“I was hopeful that there was no urgency in their plans to downscale the campus,” he said. “It is in the interest of the university to maintain the campus not least because it was their best recruiter last year.

“I also think it would kill the town of Ambleside if it were to lose hundreds of undergraduates, the alternative proposal of postgraduates was no substitute for that.”