THE head of Hereford College of Arts (HCA) is to stand down later this year with a report confirming the college’s quality status.

Richard Heatly told the Hereford Times that the report from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) represented the “right time” for him to go and the “right place” from which his successor can take HCA further forward.

Out this week, the QAA report salutes the standard of university-level provision at HCA following a review in November and commends the quality of learning opportunities.

There was specific praise for the way HCA has managed the major transitions that define Mr Heatly’s term, noting, in particular, the success of relocating university-level courses to a campus on College Road, in the listed former main block of the Royal National College for the Blind.

Mr Heatly, set to leave in August, says his successor could see the HCA established as an arts university.

He says he’ll also go with the distinct impression of HCA seen as a “precious asset” by the community, evidenced by the work students have taken to that community and beyond.

Twelve years ago Mr Heatly took up his post saying the city didn’t realise what it had in what was then the Herefordshire College of Art and Design.

Then, the college was at a pivotal point in its history as part of a plan to unify all three of the city’s colleges on a single campus when what is now the Old Market development was still being spoken of as a cultural quarter.

Those ideas, though, were very much of their time and eventually went the same way as the City of Living Crafts concept.

Instead the focus shifted to stabilised finances and the transformation of, in Mr Heatly’s words, a “crumbly looking concrete building” into today’s HCA post GCSE to post graduate offer.

At 64, Mr Heatly’s experience won’t be lost to the various arts and culture bodies in the county he’s involved with – in fact, he says, he might have more time to devote to them.