Homes England and The Hill Group are still to decide on a masterplan for the Cambridge East development
Cambridge is “already extremely well provided” amid calls for a new “lifelong learning” college on the Cambridge Airport site, the combined authority has said. Homes England and The Hill Group announced they had bought the land earlier this month with plans to build thousands of homes and a railway station.
A regional training hub is one of the options that the developers are considering before they settle on a masterplan for the area. Antony Carpen, a resident who runs the Cambridge Town Owl blog, urged Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to enter into discussions to “explore the possibility” of building a new lifelong learning college near the planned Cambridge East station.
He said this “could help reverse the decline in enrolment in adult skills” and “provide the much-needed facilities that might enable adults looking to retrain in areas with chronic skills shortages to make the change”.
A council report said that enrolment in adult skills and tailored learning had fallen in the last year by 6.2 per cent in total learners and 7.4 per cent for new starters. Peterborough accounted for over 40 per cent of learners and enrolments, “significantly exceeding its share of the adult population”.
Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, chair of the skills committee, said the decline is not identified as “being always driven by a lack of physical premises or the availability of provision within communities”.
She said: “We will always keep future infrastructure opportunities under review, including in relation to the Cambridge Airport site. The authority is focused on working with partners, including Homes England through the Strategic Place Partnership and the Cambridge Growth Company on the future skills needs of this area to enable inclusive growth.”
She said the responsibility for education is shared between the Department for Education, local authorities and individual providers – not just the combined authority.
The Liberal Democrat councillor said: “It’s about tracking provision but it’s also really important to be clear that take up of adult skills happens in a lot of different places which are not necessarily specific buildings.
“Improving take up of adult skills is more about taking out mobile provision to find people where they are rather than building new sites. I would also say that if we were going to build new sites, Cambridge is already extremely well provided with education provision.”
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