I attended a presentation this week regarding Thanet College?s relocation from Broadstairs town to a site in between the Tesco Extra and Thanet Reach Business Park at Westwood. Looking at the plans it?s an amazing opportunity for students to have access to custom built state of the art facilities, and will hopefully attract more people to go into further education either after finishing their GCSEs or as mature students. Building work should commence in August 2009 and the College will be open for enrollment from September 2011.
An artists impression of the Thanet College site in 2011.
The sale of the Ramsgate Road campus near Broadstairs town centre will partly fund the move and one can only speculate but it?s highly likely that the old site, 12 acres of land with sea views and close proximity to the town, will be demolished in favour of a housing development.
Is this just another nail in the coffin for our local towns? Thanet College has approximately 2000 full-time students, 6000 part-time students and who know how many employees, all of which contribute to the welfare of local Broadstairs shops on a daily basis. It may only be for a sandwich at lunchtime, or a chance to get a bit of shopping, but I can?t doubt that this will have a major impact on the local economy. Yes I?m only speculating but it?s simple economics right?
As one town gets a knock, a ?new town?, Westwood, will be developing even further and the presence of the new campus will surely bring in more development and investment in the area (not including the proposed 1000 new homes). One of the talking points will be of traffic and transport in an already clogged up area and I?m told that agreements are already in place with local bus companies to improve public transport in Westwood and in particular with the new campus. Will this encourage more people to ditch their cars?
Have a think about what I?ve told you, and no doubt some will have differing views on this, but you cannot deny that education is something that needs investment in Thanet, and that this development provides a great opportunity for that.
Hi Adem, (I cant find your email address so sending through this site ? sorry). I wondered where the presentation was held and who organised it? ? as I hadn?t heard about it. Many thanks and with kind regards, Chrissie.
Judging by the queues of students outside Rooks in Broadstairs High Street at lunchtimes, thats one business that will certainly notice the difference. It?s not just the ?shed? shops killing off town centre business, it?s our places of learning too now it seems.
Chrissie ? The presentation was through my work at the University and so was not open to the public. I?m sure with work due to start this summer then more information will be released.
Thanet Observer ? It?s hard to disagree that this will have a knock-on effect for local businesses but hopefully this will be balanced out by the positives of increasing education amongst the local population and providing them with vocational skills that many of the courses offer.
It is reasonable to expect that they will be open in 2011? Wow. That would never happen here. It takes forever to get this sort of thing done.
I?m impressed.
Agree with the traffic situation. However the site at Broadstairs was fast becoming not fit for purpose. The new college will be state of art, giving Thanet a chance to compete with the new Canterbury college (after all education is a business these days).
I was a mature student at Broadstairs. Although a loss to Broadstairs, in my opinion most students stayed on site. We did have the occasional class trip to either The Dickens or Morellis, this cannot unfortunately be replicated at Westwood X.
Some shops are going to loose out on the lunch time trade. Some pubs might take a hit but I wonder if the impact will be big or small?
It may not be happening it all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7951457.stm
As a noob on the subject I learnt a lot from your post. Thanks!
Funding for this has been lost due to a lack of funding. I?m not sure anythign will be happening for the near future now?
You are correct Adem, I can confirm that this definately won?t be happening in the forseeable future, with the LSC being shut down in April next year, no funding and massive government debts I doubt it will happen ever.