Uni officials have been left embarrassed as a new £13.8m building started leaking repeatedly only three days after it opened.
Students in a philosophy seminar in the new Spring Lane building last Wednesday saw water “dripping on the table for ages” as their tutor rushed out to get maintenance staff.
Bungling building bosses struggled to find enough buckets to hold all the water coming from the ceiling in ground floor room 003.
“After ages someone came but only brought one bucket,” third year PPE student Tom Butler-Roberts said. He added that the whole affair was “a bit shoddy really” and questioned whether the building had been opened too early.
On Friday the situation worsened – exclusive pictures obtained by York Vision show a huge pool of water towards the back of the entrance foyer.
Maintenance staff gathered round the puddle to discuss what to do as a cleaner mopped it up.
Another student has also separately told York Vision she saw another leak in the ceiling of the large entrance foyer towards the front of the building.
Maintenance staff are now working overnight to stop more leaks in the building.
Only last month the uni boasted of how the Spring Lane building would “provide modern teaching spaces, including a 350 seat lecture theatre, 26 seminar rooms, and study meeting areas.”
Building services confirmed they were “instigating immediate actions to rectify the issues” with the building.
Spokesperson John Meacock said campus services had been working seven days a week to get Spring Lane ready on time.
“The overall feedback on the building is very positive. Inevitably with any new building it is only when it is being used in earnest that we find some of the defects in construction and this is the case with Spring Lane,” he said.
“There have been some leaks identified and these are being attended to and we are confident that over the next few days they will be resolved.”
The news comes just a week after YUSU had to reorganise Freshers’ Fair because the new £2.2million sports tent remains unfinished. Meant to be complete by November, sports teams have been told they may have to wait until spring term to use the facility.