A TEAM of designers has been selected to draw up plans for a college on a North-East university campus, to meet fears that students have nowhere to live.

Architects Gotch, Saunders and Surridge (GSS), a 120-year-old Northamptonshire firm, has won the contract to design a 600-bed college and add extensions to two colleges at Durham University.

In total, the developments will make 1,000 student rooms available to meet concerns raised by the city's MP Gerry Steinberg recently.

He brought the university to task over the number of students relying on finding rented accommodation in the city, in the ownership of a small number of landlords.

Mr Steinberg said it artificially inflated property prices in Durham, beyond the pockets of many local first-time buyers.

The developments will cost £35.5m, with an anticipated completion date of 2006.

In line with other universities, Durham has expanded in the past 15 years.

Although the university has built about 1,000 extra rooms during that period, the number of students who live out of college in rented accommodation has increased.

The university said the building programme will reverse the trend.

Vice-chancellor Sir Kenneth Calman said: "We are delighted to award this prestigious project to a firm which has demonstrated a special touch for the design of quality accommodation for universities.

"We are a collegiate university, and it is our aim to house the majority of students in college rooms."

The university's 16th college, so far without a name, will be for undergraduates, and will be on the Howlands site, off South Road, alongside the recently opened Ustinov College, which is for postgraduates.

As part of the project, extra rooms are being added to Ustinov College and a new accommodation complex will replace the 1960s Parson's Field block, to be used by St Cuthbert's Society.

GSS's principal architect, David Allsop, said the firm was putting forward "a bold and unusual concept", in the design of the new college.

It will offer self-catering rather than the traditional three set meals a day, and features will include sloping green roofs, and slow-growing plant coverage to blend in with the surrounding landscape.

Detailed designs are expected to be completed soon, to go to the city council for planning consideration.