WITH the summer holidays drawing to a close, a new college near Berkeley is gearing up to welcome its first students.

SGS Berkeley Green will be the latest university technical college to open its doors when the first cohort of cybersecurity and engineering students arrive at the £12million centre next month.

The finishing touches are being put on the facility on the site of Berkeley Power Station’s former nuclear laboratories for the arrival of 100 14-year-olds and 70 16-year-olds who will be the first to begin their learning careers at the college.

Operated by SGS College, which has campuses in Stroud and Filton, work to build SGS Berkeley Green has been completed under-budget and ahead of schedule, according to CEO Kevin Hamblin.

“We are looking forward to welcoming the first 170 students through the doors in September.

“Initially we were worried about how many people would sign up but the number we have starting next month is well above what we had hoped for.”

Sixty students enrolled was the target for SGS College chiefs and it is hoped that within four years, as courses are fully rolled out, the number of students based at the centre will rise to the 660 capacity.

Courses offered centre mainly around computing and cybersecurity and engineering – two areas of need identified by the government.

Through use of an engineering workshop and specialist cyber security facility, as well as more traditional classrooms, staff are hoping to provide students with skills organisations up and down the country are looking for.

“This [SGS Berkeley Green] is not a traditional college,” Mr Hamblin added. “We are hoping to combine elements of a traditional school environment with those of the work place so that students are given the best possible basis for entering the workforce.

“We will encourage people from across courses to work together on projects and there is a real ethos of making everything a much more shared environment unlike more regimented traditional secondary schools.”

Meeting rooms for students have been built across the centre whilst the main study area has been merged with the canteen to more accurately reproduce work environments – a move, Mr Hamblin said, allows for more efficient use of the available space.

To mark the end of the college's construction, Mark Pausey the managing director of Kier Group, which was contracted for the build, presented Mr Hamblin with a defibrillator which will be installed on-site.

At the peak of work, about 120 people were working on the development of the centre.