Boldon House

Status: Project complete

We have invested in our staff and the facilities available to them by acquiring and developing Boldon House in Pity Me, Durham. The project gave us the opportunity to gain the required space to enhance the academic and student experience on-campus, and better support our Professional Services staff by providing improved facilities for them to use.

Timeline

• Relocation of teams into the building complete: Spring 2025.
• Internal building works and refurbishment: January 2024 onwards.
• Staff consultation: March 2022 onwards . 

Latest update

Refurbishment work has completed at Boldon House to provide additional office space for the University. 

We worked with a number of contractors to upgrade the building and design modern workspaces for staff within our Professional Services teams.

The main contractor started on-site with preliminary work in January 2024.

The former Northumbrian Water headquarters near Durham's Arnison Centre now provides an office base for a range of non-teaching University staff.

We acquired Boldon House in 2022 and carried out a range of refurbishment and modernisation work. This included re-modelling the internal office and support spaces, and work on the car park and grounds, making it one of the University’s most environmentally sustainable buildings. 

Boldon House provides the workspace that we need to deliver an improved working experience for Professional Services teams, including staff from HR and Organisation Development, Finance and Procurement, Estates and Facilities, IT, and Advancement and Marketing. 

This was a major scheme for the University which secures Boldon House's future and brings a range of benefits to the local community, including increased opportunities for businesses in the area following colleagues' usage of local facilities.

We were also awarded £1.13million for the installation of energy saving measures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in a scheme delivered by Salix Finance.  

The government funding was used to install a range of Carbon-reducing measures as part of the refurbishment work. This helped to replace the previous gas-fired heating system with brand new air-source heat pumps, alongside solar panels, improved roof insulation and updated windows.  

Find out more about the £1.13m grant to support Durham University carbon reduction project.