West London Institute of Higher Education - The Merger With Brunel University

The Merger With Brunel University

For this reason a merger approach by the Vice Chancellor of Brunel University, Michael Sterling, went amicably - WLIHE had expertise and subject areas that Brunel did not. In 1993 WLIHE ceased to exist - for the next two years, its campuses and departments were known as Brunel University College, under the stewardship of a Provost, Prof. Eric Billett; and then simply Brunel University from 1995. This status prevailed for about six years, before Brunel decided to centralise all of its operations on its Uxbridge campus, 8 miles away. By this time, many departments had already moved from Osterley to Uxbridge. The East Twickenham campus - which contains several older buildings and has a riverfront location - was sold off in 2005 and has largely been demolished and converted into housing. Its central building, Gordon House, has been on the market for two years at £15,000,000 after being sold once. It has been renamed Richmond House, even though it is not in Richmond. The Osterley campus suffered the same fate in 2006 and is now a development of new and converted housing around Lancaster House, with the famous sports fields no longer operational.

The merger with Brunel was generally seen as a positive development by WLIHE staff, given the attraction of a University name for student recruitment and prestige. Almost all staff continued in their jobs, eventually moving to Uxbridge, although the greater expectation of research output at a 'proper' university forced a few into early retirement. In addition, Sterling's replacement, Stephen Schwartz, later forced several Brunel staff into redundancy, closed the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, and merged several other groups. The Brunel merger ended most teacher-training activity. The Rambert Ballet School went independent in 2003, citing financial and creative reasons for this move.