Rescue package formed to revive city academy scheme

Brighton and Hove education chiefs said a new sponsor had been found to replace millionaire banker Jon Aisbitt, who abandoned the Falmer Academy plans this month complaining of excessive bureaucracy.

They have remained tight-lipped over the identity of the new backer, although the University of Brighton, City College Brighton and Hove and Brighton and Hove Albion football club, which will all be neighbours of the academy site at Falmer High School, have each expressed a desire to give what support they can.

The new hope for the academy has emerged at the same time as proposals for an extra City College campus adjacent to Albion's Falmer Stadium site are being looked at.

The buildings would be part of a five-year redevelopment of the college, expected to cost more than £100 million.

They would be in addition to existing plans for classrooms to go inside the East Stand of the stadium itself.

Brighton and Hove City Councillor Vanessa Brown, responsible for education, said: "We have got an offer of a sponsor and we are still actively pursuing the possibility of the school becoming an academy.

"I am confident the academy will still go ahead, so it is premature to start trying to follow other options."

Councillor Pat Hawkes, the opposition education spokeswoman, said: "This area of the city deserves the very best provision and we have been pressing the council to continue to work with the universities, city college and Brighton and Hove Albion to bring about the very real opportunities in education skills and jobs for the city's young people that the development of the site can offer.

"A new funder will mean that the academy project for Falmer is once again a strong possibility and the £26 million Government funding is not lost."

City College's planned campus at Falmer is one of a series of changes to redevelopment plans it revealed last March.

Work at four sites will be funded by the Learning and Skills Council.

It will have a main campus in Pelham Street in central Brighton and two skills centres, one at the former Comart School in Wilson Avenue, Brighton, and the other in Hove, at an exact location not yet announced.

The skills centres would take in pupils as young as 14 and would offer programmes in construction, electrical engineering, sport, health, public services and care.

The proposals will go before the council's major projects sub-committee at Hove Town Hall in Norton Road on Monday at 4pm.

An update at the same meeting will confirm the sale of City College's buildings in Francis Street, Brighton, which have been bought by developers Hyde Housing as part of plans to revamp the Open Market, off London Road.

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