00:00In January, the University of Wales Trinity St David confirmed that 200 years of undergraduate teaching would finally come to an end here.
00:08Protests were held in both Lampeter and at the Senedd in Cardiff,
00:12but the university said it was unviable to maintain the Lampeter campus at an annual cost of £2.7 million, with just 92 students remaining.
00:22All humanities courses will be transferred to Carmarthen in September.
00:25Since then, the university has met with local stakeholders, including the council, to consider viable alternatives for the site.
00:33Ceredigion Council has now outlined plans that could breathe new life into the campus.
00:38Well, we're early on in a conversation with Ceredigion Council about that,
00:42their ambition to have a place here for vocational and skills training.
00:46And so that conversation is ongoing and we look forward to having that conversation.
00:53But it's fair to say that would be a significant project with a regional footprint?
00:58Yes, it would. And again, regionally, it's vital.
01:01If you're going to draw students in here, obviously that's going to be good for the local economy.
01:06But also we've got to remember for the young people who've got probably who are going out of county for their vocational skills training.
01:14Both Ceredigion Council and the university have emphasised that this proposal is at a very early stage.
01:21But they have described it as an exciting opportunity for the campus here in Lampeter.
01:26But a member of the Lampeter Society, which has fought to safeguard university teaching here,
01:32told me they had no information about the proposals and hadn't been consulted.
01:37In itself, I think the post-16 is quite a good thing to happen.
01:42The town needs it. The young people are having to travel long distances at the moment.
01:46And it will keep the campus used, although I can't imagine that it can start immediately.
01:52But we're not very happy as a society about how this has come out.
01:57I am the Lampeter Society's stakeholder representative on the stakeholder group set up by the university.
02:04But I have found out about this through the BBC this morning, as has everybody else.
02:08There was understandable concern in Lampeter about what the end of undergraduate teaching could mean for the town's economy.
02:15One business owner said that more information was needed about the proposals.
02:19I think at the moment we really need a little bit more information to be given to us.
02:24I'm a little bit sceptical that anything going forward with the council is actually going to have the action that we need as a town with the university's future.
02:37And I think as other people have said, we've got a building here that has had nothing done to it for at least seven years.
02:45We don't have that kind of luxury with the university.
02:47We need things to be done.
02:50The university says it will retain ownership of the campus if the plans for vocational training go ahead.
02:56But there's clearly an appetite locally for more information about the scale and scope of the council's proposals for this campus.
03:03Well, let's do this.
03:07Well, let's go.
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