Plans to rescue the threatened chemistry department need more detail before they can be approved, says a university management committee.

In March, the University of Sussex announced plans to close the chemistry department, halve the number of staff and focus on chemical biology to save £750,000.

But student protests forced the university to reconsider and it allowed a review group six weeks to examine the department and school of life sciences to see if an alternative could be found.

The review group suggested a modest investment in the department.

It said three new researchers should be appointed by reassigning technicians already working in the department and that a professor and two lecturers should join the department on loan from bio-chemistry and genome studies.

A consortium of leading individuals and companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry has agreed to help the university raise £1.2 million to pay back the other departments over five years.

The Strategy and Resources Committee which considered the new proposals said more work was needed on the academic implications for life sciences, the financial detail and the risk analysis of options for chemistry.

University vice-chancellor Professor Alasdair Smith said: "Academic plans in life sciences must provide a sound and sustainable basis for building excellence in the school. I very much want us to find an approach which maintains chemistry programmes at Sussex. Of course the university senate and council would need any such approach to be shown to be robust and sustainable."

The new proposals will be considered by the university senate and council, which meet on May 12 and 15 respectively, together with a timetable for the further work needed.

A full update will be presented to the senate and council in June.

Last week the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released a damning report on the university's original plans to close the chemistry department.

The report criticised senior management for handling a "seriously flawed" process "particularly ineptly".

It said financial management played a role in the declining fortunes of the department where key members of staff were not replaced and criticised plans to replace chemistry with chemical biology, which it said was "highly dubious and certainly unsupported by any evidence".