Clearing hurdles – the journey to our brand new sixth form college 

Pudsey Sixth Form College opens this month in West Leeds after a massive and at times highly challenging undertaking. This bold project has been nearly ten years in the planning. But it was only 12 months in the making.

The original decision to create a new college in Pudsey was prompted by a lack of local provision and a looming demographic change. The sixth forms at local schools were over-capacity. And, with the number of 16-18 year olds across Leeds predicted to rise, the pressure on places was only set to intensify.

So in 2018 a new, dedicated sixth form college that could offer a broad range of subjects was proposed by a partnership led by Leeds Sixth Form College, Crawshaw Academy, Co-op Academy Priesthorpe and Leeds West Academy.

We’ll be offering up to 650 young people from our partnership’s schools the chance to study a wide range of A level, T Level, hybrid and GCSE courses.

The culmination of our project’s journey will be in year three when we’ll be at full capacity. Our journey so far has not been without some significant hurdles.

One of our original partners dropped out. And there were significant delays to the project. But the ‘fun’ really started when the Office for National Statistics reclassified FE colleges as public sector bodies in 2022. The impact of this on how colleges could manage their finances meant that we had to quickly reconsider how we were going to finance what ended up being a nearly £13 million endeavour.

The original plan had been to secure most of the money through commercial borrowing. But the new lending rules scuppered that. Given the resources – including some £1 million in design, consultancy and planning costs – that our partnership had already invested, allowing the project to fail wasn’t an option.

So we quickly mobilised, teamed up with organisations like the Association of Colleges, and contacted politicians spelling out our concerns. Thankfully, in April 2023 DfE introduced a scheme to help colleges overcome such obstacles. This enabled us to finance our college via a £12.7 million loan.

Meanwhile, there were other obstacles to overcome in the planning process. Some residents and councillors had raised concerns about the college’s likely impact on the local road network and parking. Since maintaining excellent community links and becoming part of the fabric of Pudsey was a core, non-negotiable part of our vision for the college, we were determined to tackle this head-on. We proposed a raft of traffic calming measures which we’ll be monitoring, alongside Leeds City Council, to ensure they work as intended.

But the loss of a disused playing field on the development site next to Crawshaw Academy created the greatest uncertainty. Sport England’s objections meant the Secretary of State could have ‘called in’ our proposals for further scrutiny. This would have potentially delayed or even scotched the project. Thankfully, this was not judged necessary.

Since our plans were approved in May 2024, we’ve been working flat-out with our contractors Caddick Construction. In February we were delighted to give the Chancellor, Leeds West and Pudsey MP Rachel Reeves, a tour of the under-construction building.

To get to this point is a great achievement. And many valuable lessons have been learned. The most extreme challenge has been just how quickly we’ve had to do it all. Within just over an academic year the college has been built, staffed and promoted to prospective students. Ideally, we could have done this in stages but that’s not been possible. We’ve had to make a viable and full offer from the start.

In hindsight, I also wouldn’t have timed having a baby. Our second child Emily was born in November 2024. During all this!

But we’re on track and we’ll be making this new sixth form college the best it possibly can be. It will help learners to progress into great careers or universities hand-in-hand with an inclusive approach so everyone fulfils their potential.

While we already run a successful sixth form, Leeds Sixth Form College, we know that we can’t just trade off that reputation in Pudsey. Proving our credentials to the community will rely on forging close collaborations with its organisations and businesses. That might just be the biggest, and most exciting challenge of all.