Feasibility study under way for new higher education centre in Hereford (From Hereford Times)

Feasibility study under way for new higher education centre in Hereford

7:00am Sunday 21st February 2010 in News

HOPES for improved higher education locally were revived this week when Herefordshire Council starting looking into a possible multi-use site aimed at enhancing degree-level studies.

The aim is to offer students somewhere to study in Herefordshire, rather than quit the county.

Architects have been told to look at how feasible the creation of a facility that could include residential accommodation and a union bar would be to replace the council’s £1.2 million Blackfriars Education Centre.

The idea is that the new higher education “gateway”

would bridge the gap between the retail quarter of the new Edgar Street Grid (ESG) and an urban village.

Funds totalling £3 million would come from partners like NHS Herefordshire, Herefordshire College of Art and the Robert Owen Society.

Cabinet member for economic development, Councillor Adrian Blackshaw, said: “We need to be able to offer accessible higher education to our talented young people who leave our successful schools and would otherwise move to universities outside of the county, most likely never to return.”

The Blackfriars site could be left empty when education workers move to a proposed administrative centre for the council and Primary Care Trust at Plough Lane, Whitecross.

ESG chief executive Jonathan Bretherton said the centre’s contribution to the regeneration project could present a “compelling proposition for staying, studying and succeeding in Herefordshire”.

Design firm Architype – currently developing a £2.9 million showcase library in Ledbury – is to produce a study using money from regional development agency Advantage West Midlands before the end of March.