SWINDON College is to get its new £15 million campus at North Star. The scheme was approved unanimously at a meeting of Swindon Council's planning committee.

The whole college, including 2,200 full-time and 9,000 part-time students, will move to a single site, with work beginning in April 2003.

The decision comes just days after the Evening Advertiser revealed more redundancies were on the cards at the college as it attempts to recover from a £3 million debt. It is planning to lay off at least 10 people in the near future.

Swindon College principal Mike Hopkins said: "This is good news, and adds to our buoyant recruitment figures and excellent results this summer.We are all looking forward to the move to North Star."

The Regent Circus and Ferndale Road buildings are already preparing to close while the site in Euclid Street is already shut.

The Regent Circus site at the bottom of Victoria Hill in Swindon will be sold to developers for housing or retail development.

And as part of the redevelopment project, the School of Art and Design has sold off its Euclid Street Campus to housing developers.

The Ferndale Road building is still in use but the College is in the process of selling it and it is expected to be used for housing.

Blueprints for the new college site were drawn up by London architects Shillam and Smith and comprise three buildings each four storeys high with a combined floor space of 22,350 square metres.

The first of the three building blocks will have a central glazed area leading on to a concourse with key student facilities. Other floors will house the learning resource centre, a library a staff room and laboratories.

The second block will house the School of Art and Design, performing arts spaces and specialist resources such as photography studios.

And the third block will the centre for construction courses, including woodtrades, brickwork and plumbing workshops.

Now that the design has been given formal approval, it is likely that the project will go out to tender to construction companies in November.

The application was first put to planning officers in April last year, when they agreed to grant permission as long as the college signed up to a green travel plan.

But because of changes made to the proposed green travel plan, it was forced to resubmit its application for formal approval.

Initially the current buildings will remain, but after the initial phase is completed the plan is to knock them down. Provided all goes well, and the expected finances are available, this should be in 2007-8

Mr Hopkins added: " This will give us a completely new campus and we would like to find other parners who want to work with us in developing the whole site."