Balfour Beatty has been given planning approval to begin work on the ambitious £120 million East Slope student accommodation project at the University of Sussex.

The firm is to redevelop part of the campus which will see the creation of 2,100 new bedrooms along with a new Students’ Union building and social facilities.

The new project will see the replacement of the existing East Slope student accommodation, which was constructed in the 1970s and is currently home to around 600 students.

In conjunction with the university, Balfour Beatty will finance, build, design and operate the scheme under a 50 year contract.

The first stage of the £500 million investment programme to improve and modernise the university’s campus will involve new bedrooms.

The university was last year granted outline consent for its campus scheme, which will include most of this new student accommodation.

The work on the site is to be carried out in phases, the first of which is expected to commence in January 2017 and should be ready by around September or October 2018, with all work expected to be completed by 2020.

To make sure that the architectural legacy of the campus is not compromised, the university has been working in conjunction with Brighton & Hove City Council, Historic England and other local bodies.

The university’s original architect, Sir Basil Spence, created a series of highly distinctive signature buildings, including the newly refurbished Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, the Meeting House and Falmer House.

University of Sussex Registrar, John Duffy, commented: “We will be renewing the original Spence vision with the creation of new and equally distinctive signature buildings, as well as better pathways and movement through the campus, sustaining lines of sight to the South Downs.”

He added that the choice of building materials to be used will also fit in with those favoured by Spence.