How 'bright young people' transformed a city, 30 years on

What happens when 5,000 "bright young people" are dropped into the middle of a struggling city? Thirty years ago, Lincoln began to answer that question.

In the 1980s, the Brayford Pool district – once a busy inland harbour lined with factories, warehouses and railway yards – was disused and derelict.

Tanks had been designed and built here during World War One, but like many communities, the city experienced a decline in traditional manufacturing industries.

"Lincoln was an engineering city. That was the mainstay of the economy," says David Rossington, who was chief executive of Lincolnshire's Training and Enterprise Council at the time. "All of a sudden that's disappearing.

"Where are the jobs? What on earth are people going to do?"

Jacqueline Drury, who grew up in the area, remembers playing on the Brayford when "there was nothing here", other than old railway lines.

Rossington was among local leaders who began looking for solutions. Among the most ambitious suggestions was attracting a university.

"Our bright young things are all being exported to go for a university education, which is fine. We didn't want people to stop doing that, but we're not getting anybody else's bright young things in return," he recalls.

"So we thought, hang on a minute, now that's not working, that's not fair.

"How about we import 5,000 bright young people, drop them in the middle of Lincoln, light the blue touch paper and stand back and see what happens."

On 11 October 1996, Elizabeth II officially opened what was then known as the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside (now the University of Lincoln).

Thirty years on, the Brayford Pool is a thriving hub of gleaming, modern buildings, with the university on one side and restaurants and nightspots on the other.

Drury has seen the transformation first hand, having worked at the university for 29 years.

"It was just really exciting to be part of something that was new and seeing the whole area develop," she says.

"Going from being really derelict to this fantastic space where you've got loads of people, it's thriving, you've got shops, you've got restaurants, you've got hotels, it's just been brilliant."

Establishing a university was no easy task. Rossington recalls local opposition to the idea, because the main industries were farming and engineering.

"They said, 'well it's all very well having all this education stuff, but who's going to pick the taties?

"We still need people working on the land. We still need to pick potatoes and what have you'."

By the 1990s, however, opinion had swung behind the proposals.

"There was massive public support. That was interesting, to some extent surprising."

The next question was where to build the new campus. Brayford Pool was not the only site in the running, with a former psychiatric hospital, two miles to the south, also considered.

Andrew Carnell, a photographer for Lincoln City Council at the time, remembers attending a meeting to discuss the location.

"It was the only time I actually commented on anything," he says.

"I did actually say, I think it should be at the Brayford, because a university in the heart of the city would be a fantastic opportunity for Lincoln."

Carnell now runs a busy cafe that benefits from student footfall.

"There's about a 37% drop in sales when the students are not in the city. That's primarily caused by the students going home.

"If they weren't there, you wouldn't have most of the things you have on the high street."

Initial building work on the campus started in 1994 and took two years to complete.

Because the new institution was developed out of the existing University of Humberside, initially it had campuses in Hull and Lincoln – though the Hull site was gradually scaled back and later sold off.

Since 1996, the university says it has grown from having one building and 500 students in Lincoln to 12,000 undergraduates living in the city, among 17,000 in total.

Today, the university estimates it contributes about £400m to the local economy.

Independently sourced statistics from the ONS show strong economic growth between 1998 and 2008, when GVA per head – a measure of how much economic value is generated for each resident of an area – rose by 57%, outstripping some similar cathedral cities, such as York (44%), Lichfield (45%) and Canterbury (47%), but behind Exeter (63%) and Winchester (61%).

Meanwhile, census figures show Lincoln's population grew by 27% between 1991 and 2021, compared with an England-wide figure of 18%.

However, the city continues to earn less than the national average, with a median weekly wage of £770.70 for full-time employees in England in 2025, compared with £694.50 in Lincoln, according to official figures from Nomis.

Councillor Neil Murray, who has represented the area around the university since it opened, believes the university has "provided a huge amount of direct and indirect employment – literally thousands of new jobs".

"When you look at Lincoln's High Street, it's relatively lively, while many cities are half-dead," he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). "A young population is good not just for the night-time economy, but also shops."

Drury, who is now the university's chief student experience officer, says she never expected to stay in Lincoln, but changed her mind after visiting the newly built campus.

"I kind of sometimes look around and think, that restaurant wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the university, or that wouldn't be here because the university draws people in," she adds.

For his part, Rossington is proud of the hard work that helped shift the local economy from engineering into education and services.

"We needed to be able to develop new jobs, keep up to date with various things.

"Rather than sit around moaning about our lot, we basically got off our butts and did something about it."

Additional reporting by Paul Johnson, BBC East Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, and Jamie Waller, LDRS.

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