It’s not often that a newly completed university campus is visited by judges for the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Britain in Bloom competition.

As LUC project director for the University of Northampton Waterside campus project Richard Hannay explained to RHS judges, this was a transformative story of taking 25 hectares of derelict power stations and factories and turning them into a new town centre riverside campus for the local university, comprising academic and residential buildings, Energy Centre, the restoration of listed railway buildings and two new major river crossings.

An article in The Guardian also references this transformation and its potential as a catalyst for the regeneration of the town beleaguered by the financial difficulties of the county council. The new campus buildings and LUC’s extensive public realm have already made a significant impact on a widespread audience of university staff, potential future students, townspeople and local councillors, as well as the RHS judges. The numerous comments consistently note a significant change in people’s perception of the University and, by extension, the town also.