Planners approve campus on Wirral Waters

The new Wirral Metropolitan College Campus at Wirral Waters received planning consent from Wirral Council on Friday.

The Glenn Howells Architects-designed building, within the Mersey Waters Enterprise Zone, will be a dedicated built environment, skills and enterprise centre.

Richard Mawdsley, project director at Peel, said: "Wirral Met College will be the first new building within Wirral Waters. Since we received planning permission for Wirral Waters back in May 2012, we've been focussed on site preparation, remediation and infrastructure – all of which take time and all are needed to enable us to start delivery.

"The new college is all about putting skills and training at the centre of Wirral Waters. Wirral Met are an exemplar further education college and will be training young adults with relevant skills aligned to local industries."

The campus will be developed in partnership between Wirral Met and Peel with funding from the Skills Funding Agency, the college and Peel.

Sue Higginson, college principal, said: "The college delivery programme is challenging as we are targeting to have the building completed for students in September 2015."

The site preparation and remediation of the site itself has been made possible by a £2.5m loan from the Homes & Communities Agency to Peel.