Estates Strategy

Introduction and Background

City College Plymouth provides general further education, higher education and work-based learning to the city of Plymouth and surrounding areas. As a leading provider of vocational training in the Southwest, it has a vision to be the learning destination of choice, providing learning without limits at the heart of the local community.

The 5-year Estates Strategy (2026-2031) will outline the roadmap to transform the College property portfolio into a sustainable, efficient, and curriculum-led environment. The strategy will prioritise the alignment of physical assets with modern technical education, maximizing space utilization, and reducing carbon emissions to meet institutional net-zero targets.

One of the first Institutes of Technology, City College Plymouth has recently been awarded National Defence Technical Excellence College status. This means the College is set to play an increasingly important national and international role in developing the highly skilled workforce required to support the UK's defence capability and wider economic growth.

Another exciting collaboration with Plymouth City Council is the £50m regeneration of the Civic Centre, which will be converted into 144 apartments and a new city centre campus containing the Blue Green Skills Hub, which will train up to 2,000 students a year across 60 different courses.

Strategic Objectives

The new Estates Strategy will both drive and respond to these key developments and opportunities, building on this vision and helping to shape the future careers of thousands of young people and adults. The new strategy will have the following strategic goals:

The Existing Estate

The College occupies several sites in the city with most activity taking place at the Kings Road campus. This 13-acre freehold campus accommodates over 29,000m2 of floor space, of which approximately half requires improvement to achieve the strategic goals above and to meet government estate condition objectives for the FE sector.

Leased properties include Picquet Barracks (1,900m2), Oceansgate (750m2), Pinpoint (700m2) and Norwich Union House (1,500m2). The last two are used by a college subsidiary, Achievement Training Limited. The redevelopment of the Civic Centre will add another 5,500m2 to the estate from 2031.

In response to the recent DfE Condition Data Collection, the College has commissioned an independent building condition survey, which will run in parallel with the development of this estates strategy.

Methodology

The new estates strategy will include the following core information projected over the 5-year period:

Deliverables

The final report will be presented to both the Executive Leadership Team and the Board of Governors (two separate presentations at Kings Road)

The following key outputs will be required as appendices to the report

Timescale

It is anticipated that the estates strategy will take approximately four months to prepare and the following provisional timeline has been identified

Fee proposal

Include the following information in your fee proposal: