If approved, the scheme will invest £45 million into the College and deliver new homes including 128 affordable homes for local families and a wide range of community benefits including a new Sports Centre, a community hub and public access to 12 hectares of woodland.
The College has selected and will work with Cala Homes to redevelop its campus and facilitate its vision for Brooklands Grove – a place designed for Living, Learning and Leisure that celebrates its heritage, conservation and rich woodland.
The College has faced major financial challenges in recent years, following an investigation into subcontracting that uncovered a debt of £25m that is due to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). A new leadership team is now in place and has worked up this development plan which will repay the debt, thereby safeguarding the future of the college so it can continue to serve the needs of the community and the local economy into the future.
Over the last year, the College and Cala have engaged with college stakeholders and the wider local community on a plan that will comprehensively upgrade the college campus, deliver new homes including affordable housing, and a wide range of community benefits including a new Sports Centre, community hub and open green space.
A planning application has been submitted to Elmbridge Borough Council.
About us
Brooklands College is a further education college that serves Weybridge and the wider Surrey community. It has two main campuses that are closely located to the town centres of Weybridge and Ashford, with very good local transport links and train links to London, Windsor and Guildford.
More than 3,000 students choose to study at the College each year and through the acquisition of skills and knowledge in a vocational context, they increase their life chances.
The College offers practical training for both professional development and further education in a wide range of courses and apprenticeships notably in STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Maths) including engineering, IT, Design, construction, and healthcare. It employs 270 staff and makes a significant contribution to the local Weybridge economy.
It allows local young people, adults and apprentices access to specialist training and vocational learning together with providing alternative education for 14–16-year-olds and specialist provision for those with moderate learning difficulties and disabilities.
The College has strong links with local schools and is also renowned for its high-quality provision, helping students with disabilities or special learning needs realise their full potential.
In 2021, Brooklands College, in partnership with Elmbridge and Runnymede Borough Councils launched the Youth Hub, a one stop shop of intensive employment and learning support for 16-24 years olds who are:
- Universal Credit Claimants
- Unemployed
- Facing redundancy
- Struggling to sustain employment.
The Youth Hub will continue to be a key part of the college site as well as play an integral part of the wider community; providing a much-needed resource to support young people into employment and/or education.
Cala Homes has a rich and extensive history of delivering homes which we are proud to build, and communities in which our customers love to live in. Cala specialise in delivering new places and spaces of the highest quality and usability, knitting seamlessly into existing communities.
CASE STUDY:
CHERTSEY
St Peter’s Quarter in Chertsey will deliver an impressive development of 212 homes, in partnership with St Peter’s Hospitals and Surrey Boarders Partnership. Situated to the west of St Peter’s Hospital, the site will be transformed, creating a development of family homes set amongst attractive green open spaces that respect and enhance the adjoining Homewood Park.
The site has similarities to Brooklands in that Cala worked with a public sector institution to deliver housing on Green Belt land in order to fund significant improvements in this case to the NHS Trust Estate.
Our plans
Our plans will:
- Upgrade the teaching facilities to create a college of the future that will inspire students and support their learning and skills and enable the college to better serve the needs of the local community;
- Deliver much needed Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision within a new purpose-built SEND facility;
- Deliver a new sports centre and community space for the use of the College and the wider local community;
- Generate revenue for the college to pay off substantial debt owed to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) in order to secure the college’s long-term future;
- Refurbish and renew the site’s significant listed mansion building returning it to its historic residential use and securing its maintenance and upkeep for the future;
- Provide 320 new homes of which 40% will be affordable homes providing a mix of rented housing, shared ownership and discounted first homes;
- Open up 12 hectares of woodland for newly accessible public use.
Illustrative Masterplan
A new college campus
Whilst the College has some first-class teaching spaces and high-quality learning environments including industry specialist facilities in engineering, media, hair and beauty and sports, many buildings on the Weybridge campus need major repairs or refurbishment and have been assessed as no longer being fit for purpose.
The development will provide for the £45million reshaping of the Brooklands College campus into a purpose built, secure and attractive learning environment focussed on a central quad with enhanced student facilities. This will include:
- The internal and external refurbishment and extension of the Hawker Building for Construction and Carpentry.
- The internal and external refurbishment of:
- the Tower Building for generic teaching space;
- the Barnes Wallis Building for Engineering, Food Technology, Hair and Beauty and Travel and Tourism;
- the Edge Building for Forensic Science, Health, Social and Childcare;
- the Locke King Building for the Learning Hub, Digital Media, Business and Computing Studies;
- the Admin Building for Human Resources, Marketing and apprenticeships.
- The demolition and rebuilding of the Vickers Building for dedicated Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision. Brooklands College has been allocated funding by Surrey County Council to increase the intake of SEND students in line with the forecasted growth in student numbers in Surrey.
The Concorde, Wellington, Berkeley and Talbot buildings will be demolished, with the facilities re-provided into the new buildings on campus.
The project will enable increased capacity for growing demand, such as:
- Motor vehicle
- Engineering and manufacturing
- Building and construction
- Childcare
- SEND
- Media studies
And provide for better specialist vocational facilities including:
- Art and design
- General engineering
- Catering
- Digital skills (with a new T Level starting in Sept 2023)
New homes
The College plans to work with Cala Homes and its stakeholders to develop just enough of the campus it no longer needs to facilitate the College’s modernisation and ensure its financial security going forwards.
This includes a return of the Grade II Listed Brooklands Mansion to residential use and a series of apartment buildings to complement the Mansion, following the removal of several college buildings that are close to the mansion, which are inappropriate in design and unfit for purpose, and which are detracting from the Mansion’s setting.
In addition, we are looking to utilise the car park on previously developed land to the north of the site to provide further apartments and family townhouse style homes, along with additional family housing to the south of the estate on an old landfill site. All will be designed to complement and enhance the site’s historic and ecological uniqueness.
The plans will deliver 320 homes. This includes 128 affordable homes for local people currently with a proposed tenure mix as follows:
- 32 ‘First Homes’
- 49 Affordable rent
- 47 Shared Ownership
Figures for the most recent year show that only 45 affordable homes were delivered across the Borough, despite its own Housing Needs Assessment showing it needed to provide 269 affordable homes a year.
Cala’s approach to home design incorporates principles that ensure quality and value are delivered together. Cala place great importance on establishing a high-quality environment to support healthy, active, sustainable, living communities that benefit from generous living spaces that support a high quality of lifestyle and home working space.
Refurbished mansion
In recent years, the Mansion has fallen into decline because it was not suitable for educational use and the College could not afford to maintain it to the standard necessary for a listed building. Cala has a wealth of experience working with historic and listed buildings and will look to re-establish the Mansion as the jewel it once was, revitalising it and converting it back to residential uses whilst also recreating the historic terraced gardens to the south that were such a feature in Victorian times.
Our proposals will also explore how the site’s heritage can be integrated within the masterplan including its links to the motor racing circuit to the South via a discovery trail, accessible to the local community.
New Sports Centre
A new Sports Centre will be delivered which has been designed to the latest Sport England guidance and has been strategically located so that it can be used by the College and Heathside School throughout the day, and by the wider community in the evening and at weekends.
It will include a new four-court sports hall along with a gym and fitness room for the college with the intention to provide access to the facilities for the wider community in the evenings, weekends and outside term times.
The aim is to consolidate the sports facilities, community hub and the services the college can provide to the wider public in one location, around the main campus entrance. This will allow the College to manage the facilities more effectively, whilst maintaining a secure college campus.
These sports facilities are currently not available in Weybridge, with residents having to travel to Walton or Chertsey.
New community hub
A key part of the development will be to connect the college to the community through the introduction of a community hub at the entrance to the college and in the heart of the development.
We have reached out to community groups to understand how they could utilise this space.
We also believe these could help students gain vital real working experiences complementing their main areas of study and preparing learners for the world of work, as well as developing/ learning employability skills.
Sustainability
At the heart of our plan is a desire to deliver a truly sustainable development. Our plans include:
- The protection, active management and opening up of Brooklands Woodland, as a new publicly accessible ‘Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace’ (SANG) for Elmbridge
- Improved management of the green space to enhance and diversify local habitats and ecology
- The re-introduction of the Mansion’s landscape and terraced gardens
- Implementing Cala’s Urban Wildlife Strategy that sees a range of biodiversity features included on every property as standard
- Achieving minimum 10% biodiversity net gain
- Building to the new Part L building regulations and delivering a ‘gas free’ development for the new homes utilising solar panels, heat pumps and battery storage
- A Discovery Trail through the site linking Brooklands Mansion to Brooklands Museum, providing walking and cycling links across the site and utilising the pair of bridges that cross the railway line
- The clean-up of the two extensive landfill areas on the site and bringing them back to safe use
News
Flythrough of Brooklands Grove Project
Brooklands College and Cala Homes have released a flythrough video showing what the Brooklands Grove project including the new Brooklands College campus will look like following completion.
Brooklands Radio Interview
Christine Ricketts, Principal of Brooklands College and John Richards, Land & Planning Director at Cala Homes sat down with Barry Richards on Brooklands Radio to discuss our plans to deliver £45 million of investments into Brooklands College.
Brooklands Heritage Trail Day
Brooklands College and Cala Homes would like to thank the local residents who joined us last week for the trail around the College woodland.
First image released showing the revitalised Brooklands Mansion
Brooklands College and Cala Homes have released the first computer generated image showing how the historic Brooklands Mansion will look once it is refurbished as part of the regeneration of the Brooklands College campus.
Community Newsletter: June 2023
See our latest community newsletter with details about our plans for Brooklands Grove, how the plans have been shaped by the community and the benefits they will bring to our community.
Heritage Day success
The college needs to pay back the debt to the Education and Skills Funding Agency and principal, Christine Ricketts, said the plans are “essential to securing the future of the college”
Listening to you
Over the last year, the Brooklands Grove Team has engaged with local residents and the wider Weybridge community through drop-in exhibitions, one-to-one meetings, local newsletters, and a dedicated Brooklands Grove website.
The feedback has helped inform our plans. We have also developed our plans with a comprehensive look at the cumulative impact of other foreseeable development projects in the area.
In response to feedback from the community and from assessing other projects that are likely to come forward for development in the area, we have made several changes to our plans so that the project better represents the needs of the wider Weybridge community.
By making these changes, we are confident that Brooklands Grove will not only provide much needed new homes to the area but will act as a hub and centre for the wider Weybridge community.
The changes include:
Learning
- Increasing the provision on site for local students requiring a high level of Special Education Needs supported with funds from Surrey County Council.
- Enhance our specialist training and vocational learning for 14–16-year-olds.
The new college campus
Legacy
- Demolishing unsightly buildings that have been built next to the Mansion and replacing them with smaller buildings, sited further away, to enhance the heritage of this historic building.
- Altering the main access to the college so it is more in keeping with the area and proposed architecture of the northern area of the site.
The refurbished manion building
Living
- Reducing the number of homes from 350 to 320.
- Introducing significantly more variation in the style, design and range of homes.
- Removing initial plans for a care home on the site.
- Clustering homes and reducing density in some areas of the site to protect the surrounding landscape.
- Maximising development on the previously developed, brownfield parts of the site and doing everything we can to limit development on the greener areas.
Proposed new homes
Leisure
- Improving site security and East-West access across the site.
- Improving pedestrian connectivity and access from the South (by reopening access across the railway bridge.)
- Removing planned fencing to the North of the visitor car park.
- Including ‘rain-gardens’ within the domestic scale residential streets to the south to provide a sustainable drainage solution and more appreciable urban greening.
- Engaging with local community groups to establish the type of uses that would be best suited to the flexible community hub space being delivered.
- Working with existing students to develop plans for the sports centre to ensure that it is catering for key sport / health courses offered by the College.
- Ensuring a south-west to north-east strategic footway / cycleway is delivered, across the reopened railway footbridge, connecting Brooklands and Weybridge.
- Developing plans for a SANG alongside the provision of car parking spaces in consultation with Natural England.
- Agreeing fencing specifications to the West of the development with Lockestone Close residents.
Benefits
£45 million
Investment into the college
£4 million
Planning contributions for local services such as health, roads etc.
40%
Affordable housing
A refurbished mansion building, restored to the jewel it once was
£850,000
per year Increased Council Tax revenues
£2 million
a year Estimated increased spend in local shops
12-hectare woodland
- open to the public
One new sports centre, open for community use
The project delivers a range of benefits to the local community including:
- A second pedestrian access to Heathside school connecting to the wider area through the development to help take pressure off Brooklands Lane.
- The relocation of the Brooks Restaurant and the Brooks Hair & Beauty into the new Barnes Wallis Building - the focal building and primary entrance to the regenerated College campus. Both the restaurant and hair and beauty salon will continue to be open to the public.
- Car parking will be provided for each of the non-residential uses including the Sports Centre, Community hub, discovery trail and SANG - to ensure ease of access for those living outside the College campus.
- Reopening the footbridge across the railway to facilitate north-south pedestrian and cycle links connecting Brooklands and Weybridge.
Timeline
The development will be brought forward in phases to minimise any impact on students and others that use the college and its facilities. The focus of the early works will be on delivering the College improvements. The College project will be carried out in stages to ensure minimal disruption to students’ learning.
The College have received a small amount of funding for the T-Level provision (starting September 2023) which will allow some refurbishment to start over the summer 2023. However, the major work will need planning permission from Elmbridge Borough Council.
Assuming planning is approved later in 2023, the development could be provided as early as:
