Plan blow for £62m college
Stafford College has been ordered to take its £62 million redevelopment plans back to the drawing board after they were branded "a mess".
Borough councillors considered the college's bid to transform its town centre campus last night, but hit at the plans.
They criticised the "jumbled" designs for the new complex and said the plans failed to do justice to the college's existing Grade II-listed Tenterbanks building.
They said seven buildings proposed as part of the plans looked wildly different from each other and would be out of place in Stafford's historic town centre. One critic even branded the artists' impressions "appalling" and compared one building to an "overblown plasma-screen TV".
Bosses at Stafford College will now have to rethink the controversial designs after the development control committee referred them back.
The multi-million pound plans included the demolition of some of the college buildings on the four-acre Earl Street site, as well as an extension to the Grade II-listed Tenterbanks building, which dates from 1939.
The college's principal Stephen Willis pleaded with councillors to approve the plans.
Pointing to the economic benefits of the scheme in the current climate, he said it would create local jobs. He said it needed to be started as soon as possible – partly owing to financial worries hanging over the Learning and Skills Council, which is meeting 75 per cent of the costs.
Describing the project as a "once in a generation opportunity", he urged councillors to give it the green light in order to make sure Stafford had "the best possible facility" for its young people.
However, in a letter to planning officers, an anonymous objector claimed that while existing extensions to the college were already "totally bogus", parts of the "appalling" proposals resembled "an overblown plasma screen TV".
And Councillor David Bowyer said the seven new buildings within the plans looked as though they had been done by "seven different architects from seven different companies". He said: "It looks a jumble and a mess. I can't see there's anything that makes it one definable centre. It looks worse there than it is now, and that's saying something."
