Stadium will create useful learning space

Re Tommy Bray’s letter about the Stadium for Cornwall (October 13).

Mr Bray’s views on the stadium are well known.

Some of his wider points do need comment. The revenue position of all colleges is dire, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently confirmed when it described the funding position as “having gone back to where it was a quarter of a century ago”.

The Children’s

Commissioner shares these concerns because of the impact on young people’s life chances. Schools made exactly the same point about chronic underfunding when they marched in London. Schools and colleges are not, in Mr Bray’s phrase,

‘pleading poverty’. They are fighting for the people whose interests they represent. Mocking them for doing so is also anyone’s absolute entitlement of course, but one better foregone. Most independent authorities now warn about the huge, recent disinvestment in education and skills and the effect on life chances and local economies.

Our investment in the stadium comes from the college’s capital reserves. These are only ever used to invest in stakeholders (learners and employers) across Cornwall. They wouldn’t go very far if used to prop up long-term revenue underfunding. Colleges are not businesses, they make no profit, have no shareholders and only exist for the benefit of the people who use them. The stadium will allow the college to relocate its present business centre, creating better support facilities for employers and employment across Cornwall. It will create much needed teaching and learning space for hundreds of learners every year.

As to the location of the stadium, this, obviously, has to be where those actually investing in it have determined it must be to create maximum benefit for all those using it. That location is Langarth.

Martin Tucker