Preston based company Parkinson Builders Ltd have been appointed by the University to construct a full-height internal partition wall to completely divide the existing Library as part of plans to mitigate disruption to students during the construction of a new £11m four-storey extension.

Plans to start the work as early as Monday 12^th August have been issued to take advantage of the Summer Vacation period. Parkinson’s will construct the double-sided stud partition wall from the ground floor upwards, taking approximately three weeks.

A compound is to be set up at the bottom of Library Avenue, to the rear of the Library with access to the work area via the rear doors. This will later be expanded down Library Avenue, which will be taken over as the main contractor’s compound following their appointment in November.

Construction of the new extension was announced earlier this year and plans revealed that the four-storey extension would include three floors of dedicated Library space with a fourth, lower ground floor, accessed independently to provide space for flexible learning and use by Lancaster University Societies.

The development aims to expand the library by 2600m², a space equivalent to the size of around three and a half tennis courts per floor. Construction of the extension is set to commence in November this year and should be completed by the end of 2020.

More information about the project is available online.