New classrooms planned at Sutton college campus ahead of £7.5m training and engineering facilities

West Nottinghamshire College is planning a new training centre at its Low Moor Road campus, in Kirkby, alongside a new civil engineering centre.

It comes as part of a £7.5 million investment into education facilities in Ashfield, supported by £6m from Ashfield Council’s Towns Fund cash.

Now the college has lodged plans for the three temporary buildings next to the car park at the college’s engineering centre, on Oddicroft Lane, Sutton, to provide extra teaching space and free up areas in its existing construction and engineering centres.

This will help while the proposed redevelopment of the two sites takes place and the proposed civil engineering centre is built.

Gavin Peake, college director of IT, estates and learning resources, said: “One of the classrooms will be funded by £1.5m from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

“It will involve air-source heat pumps and solar panels as a training facility for construction students.

“It will be a temporary facility, pending the submission of a planning application to redevelop the construction centre in the coming months.

“The other two are potential ‘overspill’ classrooms to accommodate our anticipated intake of new students in September 2023.

“If approved, we would seek to install the units by the summer, ready for use in the next academic year.

“All three will be moved to the new civil engineering site in the next 24 months, once the 125-year lease on the location has been agreed.”

The council is planning further education and industry investment funded through the £62.6m Towns Fund pot.

The funding is centred around a £30m flagship automated distribution and manufacturing centre, which, the authority says, will be a “national centre of excellence” focused on “promoting and providing access” to the latest technologies and best practices in automated distribution.

Coun Matt Relf, cabinet member for regeneration, said last year: “We want to be turning around the aspirations for the area.

“It’s about making sure the right conversations are going on between businesses and the education sector, so they are delivering the skills for our industry.

“West Notts and Nottingham Trent University are certainly flexing to what they can deliver and a lot of that links to what we’re doing with the ADMC.”