Bradford College

College New-Build Plans Given the Green Light

Bradford College has revealed plans to create a further multi-million pound campus in the heart of Bradford.

This announcement comes after the City of Bradford won a £17 million Government cash injection to kick start regenerations in the City in November 2011.

Bradford College’s vision for a new £50 million building has been given the go-ahead by the Skills Funding Agency, the Government organisation responsible for the funding and regulation of further education.

This comes after Mr Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said that the Government needed to be doing all it could to enable businesses and organisations to create much-needed jobs and inject private investment into the economy.

The new build is the second phase of Bradford College’s Accommodation Strategy, which was initially put on hold after the Learning Skills Council, discovered it had over-committed its budget and that all capital funding for colleges was over spent. The Learning Skills Council folded with capital funding support no longer available.

Determined to continue with the project and add to the regeneration of Bradford, the second phase will be solely funded by the College in the form of £35 million bank loan and £15 million cash reserves accumulated from past and future years up to 2013.

The first phase involved the development of Trinity Green Campus in 2008, a state of the art building which houses the Engineering, Construction and Sport curriculum areas. The College’s sports facilities now feature in the London Organising Committee Pre-Games Training Camp Guide for the Olympics in 2012.

Work on the new building will commence in the summer of 2012 and it is hoped the building will be ready by September 2014. Measuring 23,000m2 in size, it will be built on the College’s existing city centre site (Westbrook Building) and on the site of the former Randall Well Building.

The aim of College’s Accommodation Strategy is to achieve efficiencies by reducing both the number of sites and overall quantity of space that it occupies by 33,000m2. Currently the College occupies 11 buildings with the vast majority requiring considerable investment to either improve their physical condition or their suitability for the changing needs of the curriculum.

The College’s new build will replace the Westbrook, McMillan, Appleton and Old Buildings. The Westbrook Building will be demolished and the remaining buildings will either be sold or put to other use. The College plans to retain Lister Building, The Grove Library, Bolton Royd and Trinity Green Campus.

Bradford College Principal and Chief Executive, Michele Sutton, OBE said: “It’s a very exciting time to be part of Bradford College. Our new, iconic campus will revolutionise our current estate, add to the regeneration of Bradford and provide a superb student experience.”

“Students will benefit from the bringing together of facilities and curriculum into a single location, new styles of learning which embrace cutting edge technologies, realistic work environments that will be open to the public and opportunities to showcase learning activity through open plan areas.”

• Gallery - artist impressions of the phase two development

 Click here for further information...