Time for actions and not just words from Ulster University

May 2020 has delivered some great news for Derry, writes Steve Bradley.

First came confirmation that Stormont will provide the mandatory matched-funding for our City Deal - creating a total combined public investment package of £210m for Derry.

Then came news on Monday that Stormont had finally agreed a 2021 opening date for the long-awaited new medical school here. Together, these announcements have fired the starting gun on what will be the biggest ever investment in Derry (if not anywhere in NI outside of Belfast). By any measure, this is excellent news for our city.

The City Deal contains a package of projects designed to tackle the issues holding Derry and Strabane’s economy back, whilst ensuring we are better placed to deal with the changes of the impending ‘industrial revolution’ in digitalisation and automation.

Ulster University (UU) has been chosen as the delivery partner for the various research labs and innovation centres included within this theme - making it, by far, the single biggest beneficiary of our City Deal spend.

A minimum of £85m, or 40%, of the £210m total funding is being given to UU for this purpose. Derry’s City Deal proposal is extraordinarily generous towards UU.

Of the £85m+ being given to UU in this way, £20m is to fund the new Graduate Entry Medical School. We should acknowledge what this new facility entails.

UU first said, as long ago as 2003, that it would create a medical school in Derry. There were no mentions of City Deals back then and it placed no conditions on that promise.

Almost 20 years later, that facility is now finally happening solely because Derry is paying for it itself. This begs the question - what would have happened had the option of City Deal funding not arisen?

UU’s wider pledge to our city is that it wants to create a 10,000 full-time student campus here - a promise repeated continually for decades and never deviated from. As a result, every economic strategy that has been created for Derry this century has revolved around significant Magee expansion.

Council-commissioned research into the likely impact of uni expansion concluded that it would transform Derry from having, by far, the highest unemployment and economic inactivity rates in NI to, instead, being at or below the NI average.

UU has, in effect, had the power to single-handedly transform Derry’s economic fortunes at any point over the last 20 years. Yet, it hasn’t happened.

The City Deal will, undoubtedly, be the greatest investment in Derry for decades, and it has the potential to be hugely transformative for our economy. Delivery partners are required to turn its ambitious proposals into reality and UU is well-placed for that task. In many ways, it is an obvious choice to be involved.

But it must also be acknowledged that the institution has squandered the goodwill and trust of the people of Derry. UU must show - through actions, not words - that Magee is no longer its bottom priority.

And, whilst the new medical school is welcome, it should also be noted that, at its peak, it will cater for no more than 440 students - almost 7,000 full-time places short of the 10,000 capacity campus promised to us for decades.

Derry’s City Deal funding is a precious resource that our council and elected representatives battled hard to secure. We will not see its like again for at least a generation - if ever.

It is not a bottomless pit, so, how we choose to spend it, clearly carries an opportunity cost.

UU must provide meaningful commitments - supported by a credible timescale and details of how expansion will be funded.

A deadline of no later than 2030 should be set for when we expect UU to have brought 10,000 full-time students here.

Any new student places created through City Deal funding should be excluded from UU’s target, because they will have been paid for and created by this city and not UU.

This is a fair request in-return for the £85m+ City Deal funding being given to UU.

After all, they’re only being asked to deliver on their promises.

Steve Bradley is a commentator and urban regeneration consultant from Derry. He can be followed on Twitter at @Bradley_Steve