the 2000s that the modernist chapel formerly of Christ's became the only chapel at the Taggart Avenue site, with the Saint Katharine's chapel converted into a senate chamber.) Student social life was also largely carried on separately in the two colleges.
In 1990 the colleges merged and LIHE became a single institution as opposed to a federation of two colleges. The colleges therefore finally ceased to exist as academic entities.
=== Greater independence and a new name ===
The 1988 Teaching and Higher Education Act had imposed a new accountability framework which made the "tutelage relationship" with the University of Liverpool more inconvenient for LIHE in the early 1990s. In response to the 1988 Act, the validation agreement which operated through the Board of College Studies was tightened. University of Liverpool staff were now required to be present at LIHE subject management meetings and to be consulted over any proposed academic changes, however small.
In 1994 these constraints resulted in the replacement of the validation agreement with an accreditation agreement from the University of Liverpool which gave LIHE autonomy to validate undergraduate degrees on its own. With the change also applying to the former Diocesan Training College in Chester (by that point renamed as Chester College of Higher Education and the only other remaining Affiliated College), the University of Liverpool's College Studies Unit was disbanded the same year.
In 1995 it was decided to rename LIHE, which formally assumed the name Liverpool Hope University College (shortened to "Liverpool Hope" or simply "Hope"). The name-change represented an attempt to establish a more striking, characterful identity that reflected the original religious purpose of the three founding colleges. Reflecting upon the renaming in 2003, Elford asserted that "Hope is now arguably one of the most mission-explicit Christian institutions in British higher education".
The Taggart Avenue site was accordingly renamed Hope Park, with the site of the former St Francis …
