A major redevelopment of the City College Norwich campus has been signalled after plans were submitted for a new £2.5m centre to support students with profound and multiple learning difficulties.
A planning application has been submitted to Norwich City Council for a 590sqm single-storey building in Broadland Drive, which will cater for around 20 students with complex needs.
The plans also include the refurbishment of existing classrooms in the Norwich Building to provide specialist support for a further 80 students with emotional, behavioural and social difficulties.
If approved, the proposals will see the demolition of vacant single-storey workshops, built in 1939, at the rear of the Norwich Building. The upgrade of facilities has been made possible after the college successfully bid for a grant for £2.5m from the Education Funding Agency through Norfolk County Council.
The proposed PMLD centre will be home to a single large classroom space with individual learning stations specifically designed to support those with complex needs aged 16 to 25.
The planning application also includes a new 168sqm outdoor space adjacent to the PMLD building for recreational and teaching activity attached to the centre. Next to this will be a larger outdoor area that will periodically be used to host market stalls selling products and services from the many student-led enterprises now operating within the college.
Corrienne Peasgood, principal, said: 'We are proud of the fantastic one-to-one support the college currently provides to students with profound and multiple learning difficulties, which was rated as outstanding by Ofsted earlier this year. The planned new PMLD centre will ensure that we also have outstanding facilities in which to support a greater number of these students even more effectively.
'I am also very excited by the plans for a student market area in the outdoor space adjacent to the new building. This will provide a further avenue for our students to develop entrepreneurial, communication and selling skills, which is a core part of our commitment as a Gazelle College to entrepreneurial learning.'
Subject to planning approval, the new building will be completed in December 2014.
For more information, visit www.ccn.ac.uk/improvements
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