Radical redevelopment includes 120-seat lecture theatre and break out spaces
Inner Temple’s ambitious new plans to create an “education and training centre” for students and barristers in the heart of legal London has been given a big thumbs up by planners.
Dubbed by Inn bigwigs as ‘Project Pegasus’, the radical redevelopment includes an education suite featuring a 120-seat auditorium, training rooms and break out spaces. The proposals — submitted to the City of London Corporation’s planning committee back in January — reveal the new teaching centre will be housed within the third and fourth floors of Inner Temple’s historic Treasury Building.
Other improvements given the go-ahead include an overhaul of the Inn’s basement kitchen, re-allocation and refurbishment of staff offices and a new balcony offering “spectacular views” of Inner Temple’s gardens.
A spokesperson for Inner Temple, commenting on the planning approval, said:
Our redevelopment plans show a commitment to creating and sustaining a strong legal profession that has access to the highest quality education and training facilities. The needs and demands of training for barristers and other legal professions have changed immeasurably in the last 50 years. To ensure that we remain at the heart of the legal profession both here in England and Wales and internationally it is important we have the right mix of facilities to support our members and the community.
The nod from planners comes just just a month after Legal Cheek revealed that the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA) was quietly putting plans in place to launch a new Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC).
The training organisation — made up of barristers, judges, lawyers and academics from across all four Inns — said it was “seriously considering the possibility of delivering a new version of the BPTC in collaboration with another organisation or on our own.”
Is Inner Temple’s new education centre in any way linked to the ICCA’s BPTC plans? An Inner Temple spokesperson told Legal Cheek:
As we [Inner Temple] set out in the press statement, Project Pegasus will ensure that the Inner Temple can develop and deliver our high-quality training in fit-for-purpose facilities.
But Inner Temple isn’t the only Inn to undergo a facelift. In 2015 we brought you the news that Lincoln’s Inn was building a bunker under its historic medieval hall. Architects’ drawings — acquired by Legal Cheek at the time — showed that the new “educational suite” would be split over two subterranean floors and include, like Inner, a large lecture theatre. Construction, now well underway, is due to be completed next year.
Read about Project Pegasus in more detail:
For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub.