Plans for a new £4m green skills training centre for Wisbech have been put before Fenland District Council. If approved the backers, Anglian Water, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and the College of West Anglia (COWA), hope it will open in 2025.
The centre will provide 1,155m2 training space, two permanent jobs by 2025, and 30 indirect jobs supporting the training centre and students within 20 years.
The aim is to attract 900 apprentices/students within 20 years.
The green centre will be a two storey building on a vacant plot within the College of West Anglia Wisbech Campus.
It will offer three workshops, a multi-use studio and associated ancillary facilities.
The site of the new building is on the site of a building demolished a number of years ago, the space since used by construction skills students learning how to dig trenches and install below ground services.
The development site is to the west of the campus adjacent to the campus boundary and the A1101 Churchill Road dual carriageway which runs through the centre of Wisbech.
As previously reported by CambsNews it’s a slimmed down version of a much larger £10m centre that was originally proposed but this failed to attract funding following an unsuccessful bid put forward by Fenland District Council for levelling up funding.
The Combined Authority is providing £2m towards the cost, the college itself will chip in £200,000 and Anglian Water backing it also to the tune of £2m.
Anglian Water says it has been at the forefront of supporting – and securing funding – for the new centre.
The water giant says its £2m of overall funding came from itself and 15 other key “alliance partners”.
A spokesperson for Anglian Water says the centre “will provide a vital hub for local people keen to pursue a career helping the environment.
“It will be based at a new, sustainable building, powered by solar panels and with rainwater harvesting technology installed to reduce water use”.
The spokesperson added: “Once a thriving town, Wisbech has struggled with sustained underinvestment since the industrial revolution – with a national index placing the town in the bottom 10 per cent nationally for four of the top eight deprivation indicators.
“Wisbech is considered the capital of the Fens and is home to a quarter of all Fenland’s residents.
“Anglian Water has been working in partnership with Business in The Community (BiTC “to help regenerate the town since 2013, applying a pioneering place-based approach with the aim of improving social, economic, and environmental prosperity.”
The spokesperson said the Green Skills Academy aims to create a pipeline of new talent, with highly employable environmental skills.
“Green skills such as carbon reduction and conservation work will be vital in delivering the infrastructure and environmental work crucial to building resilience against the ever-increasing impacts of climate change over the coming years,” said the spokesperson.
“This is particularly fundamental for Anglian Water, which has proposed £9 billion of investment into the East of England between 2025 and 2030.
“In order to deliver this plan, the company will need to recruit thousands of new employees, including up to 800 apprentices – many of them into green jobs.”
Jason Tucker, director of strategic delivery and commercial assurance for Anglian Water, said: “We’ve long prioritised social prosperity alongside environmental outcomes, especially through our work in Wisbech with BiTC and through the Future Fens project.
“This new training school will help provide a pathway for local people, especially those at the start of their career, to get involved in really important work that will benefit our region’s environment for years to come.”
David Pomfret, Principal of the College of West Anglia, said: “We are grateful to the Combined Authority for having the vision to fund this exciting facility and excited to build on our strategic partnership with the Anglian Water and its alliances, through their transformational investment.”
The College of West Anglia Wisbech campus was previously known as Isle College and founded on its present location in 1956. In 2006 Isle College merged with the College of West Anglia.
