Building Can Start on the New Rural Skills Centre!

Dear Reader

Ever since we began designing it over a year ago, we've been anxiously awaiting the granting of planning permission for our New Skills Centre. The day has finally come and we're very excited to announce that we have been granted the permission and we begin construction this month!

Best Wishes

James

The New Centre

It has always been one of our aspirations to create
a centre that will continue to offer the same sort of training as we always have to our students and external customers. The new centre will be a new, enhanced facility that will give even further provision of our practical and vocational courses.

The new centre is the result of a funding partnership between the Royal Agricultural College (RAC), and the Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust, and represents an investment of £1.2million. We've included some of the CAD drawings in this newsletter to give you an idea of what it will look like when construction has finished.

The enhanced centre will comprise the following:

Reception complete with toilets, shower, changing room and kitchen.
Centre administrative offices.
Events room with 70 guest capacity that can also be divided into two for smaller groups.
4 small theory rooms capable of sitting 6 plus instructor.
1 dirty workshop/classroom for chainsaw- and brushcutter-type courses
1 dirty classroom/lab suitable for initial preparation of samples from the field or as a second dirty classroom.
A large workshop used for both demonstration of agricultural machinery and workshop skills sessions for topics such as machinery maintenance and welding tuition.
Heated store areas for all training equipment including quad bikes.
A large well-planned outside training area well clear of pedestrian areas for forklift and tractor operation.
Plenty of full height storage for machinery and vehicles.
Full access to the farm and woodlands for RSC courses

Outreach, Research and Corporate Events
Our rural skills based provision will really feel the benefit of the new centre, but in addition, we're also looking forward to using the centre as a “gateway” for visitors. We will continue to welcome agricultural groups, students and schools in a brand new Visitor Centre. This will also enhance our capacity to host our outreach programmes

We will also be able to get a lot more involved in research by being able to run some of the initial work in our new lab. Samples collected from the fields can be brought straight into the centre for preparation.

Our new Events room, which has a capacity of 70 guests, will be perfect for commercial events, launches, meetings and seminars and will be available for hire at a very competitive rate. It can also be split into two for smaller groups, and the new centre will be more easily accessible as it's nearer to the Swindon/Gloucester road.

Future Plans
At a later date we intend to add extra office space on a second floor above the theory rooms. We'll also be replacing some redundant farm buildings with a full set of modern ones, including a general purpose cattle shed and handling area, all of which can be access by Rural Skills Centre students, only 200 meters away.

Once all the buildings are in place we will be looking to expand our range of courses as we will have much more space and capacity to run them.

We're due to open the new centre in October 2013, in time for the new academic year, so look out for further news in our later newsletters. In the meantime, you can read more about it on the official press release

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