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A student occupation at the University of Warwick’s newest conference centre will continue into the night after the protestors locked themselves into the building.

The protest continues as the students involved settle in for the night.

Earlier this afternoon members of the Warwick for Free Education group occupied the university’s brand new £5.3m conference centre - The Slate.

An earlier protest at Warwick University

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Then protest relates to concerns the direction higher education is being taken in.

The students say they are worried about student debt, staff being overstretched and that large companies will come in and run universities for profit.

Earlier student representatives from the occupation and Warwick SU had a meeting with Stuart Croft, the university’s vice chancellor, outside the building.

The Warwick SU has added its backing to the protestors, issuing a statement which said: “The students’ demands - that the university opt out of the government’s proposed ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’, agree to the “6 Demands for fairer teaching conditions” among casualised staff and abolish the protest injunction - are all supported by democratic mandate and SU policy.

“The traditional democratic channels open to staff and students have now been exhausted.”

The staff union UCU also backed the student occupation and said: “The students’ arguments are compelling; Warwick UCU fully supports their objectives and completely endorses their demands.”

By protesting, students and non-students are directly breaching an injunction made against them by the courts in 2014 .

Today they are also calling for the injunction to be scrapped.

The injunction follows from a series of protests and sit-ins in December 2014 where the police were eventually involved.

The students’ basic demands are:

The university must opt out of the Teaching Excellence Framework .

The university must agree to Warwick Anti-Casualisation’s 6 demands for fair teaching conditions.

The university must scrap the protest injunction and apologise for their handling of the events of 3.