UNIVERSITIES, including the prestigious American institution at Harvard, are being wooed to set up a campus in Kent Thameside.

Planners masterminding the multi-billion pound regeneration scheme are convinced that a high-quality centre of higher education would make a big impression on investors and help to accelerate progress.

Jackie Sadek, chief executive of the Kent Thameside delivery board, based in Northfleet, confirmed she had been speaking to a number of academic institutions about a possible site for an "iconic" building that she estimates would cost around £15m.

They include the London School of Economics, the universities of Cambridge, Westminster and Kent, and Harvard. She says they have all expressed interest.

She is keen to attract a high-profile institution to help "create an address", believing that once an area becomes widely known, more people will sit up and take notice.

"You create an address and then you bring every single person in the world to see it, preferably on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, 17 minutes out of St Pancras, and you breathe this thing into life," she said.

Ms Sadek says any academic institution should focus on urban regeneration, an area of study that is practical, and highly appropriate to the area.

She believes it would earn an international reputation and help put Kent Thameside on the academic map.

"We know enough people to put together possibly the finest urban regeneration training school in the country."

Its location close to Ebbsfleet International Station would make the course attractive to European students, she says.

Jeff Brown, spokesman for the University of Kent in Chatham Historic Dockyard, confirmed his institution was taking a special interest in Kent Thameside. As a countywide organisation, it wanted to take its services across Kent and Medway.

It is understood that university chiefs have held exploratory talks with council chiefs in Dartford.

"The exciting Gateway developments, especially in the Dartford area, would require quality HE provision and a particular focus on vocational-related courses," he said.

The University of Kent attracted a lot of students from the area and it would be good to offer good facilities closer to home.

"We're happy to work with all sorts of institutions to get the right result for our region," he said.

"This part of the world is very exciting for business and education and I am not surprised we are attracting interest from leading institutions. This is the place to be in the UK."

Local experts are in the process of digesting a paper on a higher education institute in Kent Thameside by consultant Simon Brooke.