Accommodation ‘single biggest barrier’ to Magee achieving 10,000 students

Accommodation is the ‘single biggest barrier’ to the Magee Taskforce achieving its goal of having 10,000 full-time students at Derry’s Ulster University campus.
That is according to Stephen Kelly, the chair of the Magee Task Force.
Mr. Kelly was in conversation at a Derry Feile event, with the focus of the conversation about the progress of the taskforce.
He said: “Student accommodation is a massive issue with students wanting to stay and live on campus and have that student lifestyle.
“The city is already in housing stress, with seven and a half thousand people on a housing waiting list.
“If you just take the model that Ulster University has, which is that all first-year students for their first year plus all medical students for the entirety of their term of study are guaranteed university-managed accommodation.
“We are hundreds of units short just for just them students, never mind thousands of units short for those other students in years two and three.”
There have been moves to increase university accommodation, as seen with the unveiling of new self-contained residential accommodation at Magazine Street, providing an extra 40 beds.
While this is a start in addressing the issue, Mr. Kelly believes that if the taskforce is to succeed, the entire city must support the redevelopment of the city.
“This is a transformative project,” he said.
“If you are going to increase the population of the city by 2,500 people every year and a lot of those people are going to stay, it will have a stress on all types of services, whether it is accommodation, public transport, parking, or medical.
“Huge support for the development of the university and its expansion from the Glen Development Initiative, but they don’t want their local community to become similar to areas of Belfast, transforming into student areas like the Holylands.”
The taskforce was launched in March 2024, with their target date for achieving the expansion being as soon as possible.
Mr. Kelly explained the difficulty with how the planning process works in Northern Ireland and the political bartering system that operates in Stormont and how that slows down any project, except when it comes to urgent work.
He said: “One of the first things we did was that we expanded the taskforce, and I brought in Mary MacIntyre, who used to be the head of planning service from Newtownstewart.
“Just at our meeting last week, Mary talked about the redevelopment of Windsor Park because of the urgent nature of it, it was brought through in 11 weeks.
“There are a number of models that can actually speed the business case side up; part of that is the university, is that the university stands up its own money and doesn’t need to go through the OBC (Outline Business Case) process, but it is replenished later on.
“The other way is the private sector, just to get on with it through purchases and that sort of stuff.
"Secondly, it is on the actual physical planning stuff; it is horrendous the way our planning system is allowed to operate.
“There is then a sort of bartering process with special advisors where they will be like, ‘This is really, really important; what do we have to do to get this thing sorted?’
“The fact that there was agreement on 10,000 being accepted by the British and Irish governments and the executive parties is a feat in itself. It is an enormous, enormously difficult thing to get any commitment to anything.”
Mr. Kelly assured the audience at the event that there is commitment from the Vice-Chancellor of Ulster University, Paul Bartholomew, to see the project through.

Previously, there had been promises made without any real commitment from previous vice chancellors, but Mr. Kelly confirmed that even if Mr. Bartholomew were to leave his position, the project would still continue as there is a commitment from the executive, the university, and Derry City and Strabane District Council to achieve this.
Mr. Kelly said for the taskforce to achieve their aim, it is important to make studying in Derry an enticing prospect.
He said: “We need to make this an attractive place to come because, at the end of the day, each one of these students is a customer. They choose where they put their own money.”
He added that there should be a focus on looking to target students who may be in two minds about leaving Northern Ireland and on attracting students from the Republic of Ireland.
Mr. Kelly is optimistic the taskforce can bring a positive change to the university in Derry and help tackle the imbalance in the country, with 83 percent of higher education students in Belfast and 95 percent of the funding for higher education for capital funding also in Belfast, according to Mrs. McGinty.
He said: “Should 10,000 be the height of our ambitions? No. Has anyone said that it should be? No.
“It should only be a new floor from where we kick on from.
“You can only do a journey from where you physically and actually are. And that is our role as a Taskforce.”