Colleges miss out in budget blunder; pounds 200m rebuild plans on hold.

Byline: Nicola Juncar

WHITEHALL last night blocked pounds 200m plans to rebuild North East colleges.

A budget blunder by the Learning and Skills Council left nearly 200 further education bases sweating on expansion plans.

And yesterday the Government announced only 13 of them would be given the money they had been promised before the LSC realised it did not have enough to pay the bill.

The decision left Northumberland and

South Tyneside Colleges counting a pounds 200m cost, with ambitious expansion plans now put on the back burner for at least two years.

Northumberland College has a pounds 100m plan to build modern campuses in three locations.

Building work was due to start later this year on a pounds 50m campus on the former Ashington Hospital site, which had secured regional LSC approval and outline planning permission.

South Tyneside has a pounds 102m plan for new buildings on its South Shields and Hebburn sites, including specialist equipment for its popular marine department.

Contractors had already been appointed.

Jim Bennett, principal and chief executive at South Tyneside College, said: "This news is deeply disappointing and is clearly not the decision we were hoping for.

"The members of the board and the staff are extremely angry that this entire process has been so abysmally mismanaged by the LSC nationally and essentially puts us back where we were three years ago.

"However, we can not dwell on this anger and disappointment and must now draw a line under the debacle and concentrate on the task in hand of providing first-class teaching from all of our sites across the borough.

"By hook or by crook there will be new facilities at South Tyneside College." Northumberland College Principal and Chief Executive Rachel Ellis-Jones said: "We are obviously extremely disappointed at the news, although we have had no confirmation of this decision from the Learning and Skills Council. The LSC has for some years given the college great encouragement that we had a very strong case for new build.

"It is a great shame for people looking to access further and higher education in

Northumberland - the only county in the country to have had no capital funding.

They will sadly be denied the 'world class' facilities the Government promised them.

"The college management and governing body remain determined to secure capital investment to transform our learning facilities and will continue to lobby the Government until Northumberland gets its new build." The LSCouncil froze the building programme in December because there was not enough money to go around.

Further Education minister Kevin Brennan said the 13 colleges were chosen after the LSC looked at where the funds would have the greatest impact for students, employers and communities and where work can be started quickly and get the best value for the taxpayer.

The remaining 167 colleges in the programme will not learn if they can go ahead until 2011..

CAPTION(S):

HIGH HOPES Bob McDonald, chair of the governors at South Tyneside College, left, principal Jim Bennett and local MP, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, review the plans which have now had to go on the back burner.