We had fantastic news last week that further projects from our Towns Fund investment are moving forward. This follows on from the new Warsop Leisure Centre which was given final approval a few months ago and is underway.
This is the next phase of the Government's Levelling Up programme, and funding worth over £12 million for our town. It also includes town centre parking improvements and investment in Berry Hill Park, amongst other things.
This next stage means the Future Tech Skills and Knowledge Exchange can now be built, creating a new teaching and innovation space at the Chesterfield Road campus of Vision West Nottinghamshire College.
The centre - due to open in 2024 - will provide more access to STEM subjects, address high-value employment opportunities in priority sectors and support businesses to adopt new technologies.
The college’s former visual art and design building - once the Mansfield School of Art - will be demolished to make way for the new state-of-the-art facility, continuing to improve our education provision across the area and offering more amazing courses for prospective students.
It’s great news for our college and builds on the amazing success of the teaching staff there who’ve built the college from failing to a major success in recent years, including partnering with Nottingham Trent University to make Mansfield a university town.
It’s my hope that Mansfield residents will soon be best placed to take advantage of the amazing career opportunities coming to our part of the world, like our STEP Fusion reactor being built just down the road from here.
Partnerships like West Notts College and Nottingham Trent University will be essential to making that happen and bringing education resources further into our town centre for people to access, including adult education courses for those looking for a career change into these high-skilled jobs.
It’s great to finally be in a place where spades are going into the ground and we’re starting to see the benefits of all this Government funding, with so much more to look forward to in the coming years like our £20 million transformation of the old Beales building at Stockwell Gate.
Instead of sitting empty for decades this building will have the potential to be a hub for better local services, education, business, leisure and even retail, bringing in an estimated 1,000 more people a day to Stockwell Gate.
We also have a further £20 million of Levelling Up Partnership funding on top of this with key stakeholders set to decide the right way to spend this, to ensure it has a long-term benefit for our local economy and improving people’s skills and life-chances.
I’m looking forward to continuing to see how all this brilliant Levelling Up investment like the Towns Fund comes into fruition over the coming years, and residents have my guarantee that I’ll continue to work with Government to ensure all of it is delivered.
