City College Norwich set for new building after £4m boost

City College Norwich is set to spend more than £4m on a new skills centre on its Ipswich Road site allowing it to expand its construction courses from September 2024.

The vast majority of the funding for the project - £4m - will come from the Department for Education's post-16 capacity fund - a pot of cash designed to enhance skills in school leavers.

Subject to being granted planning permission, the college will put the funding towards a new two-storey building on the ever-growing site.

The new building will be set alongside its bricklaying and carpentry workshops, with the investment also seeing upgrades to its existing facilities.

It comes with CCN facing growing demands for its construction courses - which have been operating at full capacity for several years.

Liv Bradley, head of construction at City College Norwich. Picture: CCN (Image: CCN)

Liv Bradley, head of construction at the college, said: "The skills needed are changing rapidly as the construction industry responds to the challenge of decarbonisation.

"The young people we train today need to have the core practical skills and knowledge associated with their trade.

"It is a very exciting time for a young person to be entering the construction industry.

"It's a career in which you will be constantly learning, responding to new challenges, while making a very direct contribution to the spaces and places in which we all live and work.

"The fact that we will be able to train even more young people for construction careers from next September is absolutely brilliant."

The entire project will cost £4.4m, with the college investing £400,000 of its own cash on top of the funding boost.

The upgrade will see the addition of a new 1,200sqm building and refurbishments of the site's existing bricklaying workshops.