UEA receives £1.5m Greater Norwich Growth Board funding boost for School of Oral Health

The University of East Anglia has released a news article on their website, which has also been picked up and published on the Eastern Daily Press, Norfolk’s local paper, detailing how they have received a fund of £1.5m from the Greater Norwich Growth Board (GNGB) to build a new facility, moving it one step closer to the delivery of a School of Oral Health.

Subject to a final stage of decision making, the money from Greater Norwich Growth’s Infrastructure Investment Fund will be used to construct an extension of the Edith Cavell Building on the site of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital at the Norwich Research Park.

Works began earlier this year to construct a ground floor extension of the building, which will be the home of the School of Oral Health.

This space will be equipped with dentist chairs, clinical grade fittings and other specialist teaching infrastructure such as phantom heads, teaching laboratory and seminar rooms. When completed, the school will provide capacity for 40 undergraduate students per year.

It is hoped that, should training start in September 2026, the first group of dental students would qualify as dentists in June 2031, but they will be capable of delivering basic treatment within a few years.

UEA will be drawing on its experience of its medical school to retain graduates in the area, which boasts one third of UEA Medical School graduates work long-term in the region post qualification.

Initially, 40 students would be enrolled each year, but the next phase would see an even larger expansion, with another 31 chairs added to enable 65 students a year.

3D images by LSI Architects