PM overcomes protests in Cannock to meet students for college tour
There was a heavy police presence outside Cannock College when the Prime Minister paid a visit.
A large group of pro-Palestine protestors played loud music, waved banners and chanted as Rishi Sunak arrived to tour the college's engineering and other departments.
No arrests were made but the group was still present an hour later when the Prime Ministerial car left Staffordshire to head back to London.
The landmark Roman Way hotel in Cannock housed asylum seekers for two years until December last year and the group were also protesting about their removal.
Rosie Jones, who lives in Cannock said: "They were turfed out over Christmas to be put in strange communities over the festive period with very little notice and the government have shown blatant disregard for the plight of refugees.
"They are also showing no mercy towards Palestinians despite reportedly being willing to drill there for natural gases.
Accompanied by Cannock Chase MP Amanda Milling who holds an almost 20,000 majority in the constituency, Mr Sunak toured the engineering building in high Green and met students from the health and social care programme.
He said the site had gone from shutting down in 2017 to servicing hundreds of post 16 students in the Cannock Chase area.
He said:"I was excited and inspired to see the students learning new skills.
"We have made a priority of pushing apprenticeships as a way of young people earning whilst they learn.
"There are more people than ever doing them and if you look at almost any occupation now there are opportunities for post 16 students to take them up.
"Cannock College is a prime example of that and I applaud the work the staff are doing."
Ms Milling said she hoped to see the fruition of the £20m levelling up money awarded to Cannock by the government in 2021.
She said: "It was as a result of government funding for the regions but the plans need to be thought through and then seen through and we hope to see progress soon.
She said she was looking forward to the challenge of the general election saying the government's policies on the economy including cutting the taxes of working people would come to fruition.