Bournville College may know “within weeks” whether a long-awaited£84 million rebuild will go ahead,according to the minister responsible.
Sion Simon, the Birmingham MP and skills minister, was speaking after he met college principal Norman Cave to discuss the refurbishment.
Mr Simon has the task of sorting out a funding crisis which has left dozens of college expansion schemes facing the axe after the Learning and Skills Council approved 79 projects across the country, costing £2.7 billion – when it had only £2.3 billion to spend.
Bournville College’s planned move to the former Rover factory in Longbridge is one of 16 schemes across the West Midlands under review.
The minister met Mr Cave along with MP Richard Burden (Lab Northfield), Howard Saycell, chairman of the college board, and Mike Murray, senior development manager at St Modwen.
He said: “We are hopeful that the new leadership of the Learning and Skills Council will be able to provide the clarity that people want in the next few weeks.”
St Modwen, which is responsible for transforming 468 acres of south Birmingham including the former MG Rover works, has said it is confident the scheme will still be built.
But earlier this month, former Audit Commission chief executive Sir Andrew Foster claimed there was “very little chance” that Bournville and 15 other West Midlands college expansion schemes would go ahead.
The rest of the Bournville College scheme includes 2,000 homes, parks, a new town centre, a technology park, industrial and commercial development, and is set to create 10,000 jobs.
