Warrington UTC set to go on site

Contractor ISG will start work in the coming weeks on Warrington's University Technical College specialising in energy and engineering, after it was announced Manchester Metropolitan University will run the new secondary school.

MMU, which replaced University of Chester as the education sponsor, will not be putting any money into the £10m project, due to open in September 2016, but will appoint the principal and all staff, set the curriculum, and manage it on a day-to-day basis, including recruitment of students and promotion.

UTCs are Government-funded colleges that offer 14 to 19-year-olds an alternative education based on vocational training.

UTCW will specialise in energy and engineering and will offer opportunities for young people to work with major energy and engineering employers based in the town, including Sellafield, National Nuclear Laboratories, AMEC Foster Wheeler, Tenet Consultants, Nuvia, Atkins and Flamefast.

The new facility designed by Ellis Williams Architects will sit next to the Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering Business Incubator currently under construction by ISG and set to open in September 2015 at Stadium Quarter.

A spokesman for UCTW Trust said: "Whilst we were sorry that University of Chester felt unable to continue with the project, all partners are absolutely delighted to have Manchester Metropolitan University on board. Their swift decision to step in to support UTCW is a great endorsement of the project and of Warrington and its ambitions. We are looking forward to working with MMU and developing this superb opportunity for the benefit of the young people of Warrington and the town in general."

Dr Georgina Harris, head of the school of engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: "Energy is a vital engineering sector for the UK's future power security. Ensuring that we have the expertise and skills necessary to design, develop, commission, run and decommission power generation and distributions systems in the UK will be key to this plan. The university's world-class expertise in generation and smart grid technologies, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, stress and structural analysis, and the advanced computational methods associated with these disciplines means that we are ideally placed to work with our Warrington industrial partners on the development of this UTC.

"We believe the UTC will meet the needs of the young people of Warrington and will help students to thrive in the engineering and energy sectors, ready to tackle the industrial challenges of tomorrow."

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