A WEEK after announcing a £70m city-centre scheme, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College has unveiled plans to transform its Blackbird Leys campus.

The college has released architects' drawings showing its vision for the Blackbird Leys site, with plans to demolish all the existing buildings.

They will be replaced by a new glass-fronted £16m college of further education. The scheme will be partly funded by the sale of almost half the Cuddesdon Way site, which is expected to be developed for housing.

The new Blackbird Leys college is expected to be completed in 2011, with the scheme running about a year behind the proposed new four-storey building in Oxpens.

The new college building, in the centre of the Blackbird Leys estate, will focus heavily on vocational courses, with improved facilities for students involved in construction and motor vehicle work.

There are also plans to turn the Blackbird Leys campus into a major centre for sports studies, with a gymnasium and all-weather five-a-side pitches proposed.

As with the Oxpens scheme, the emphasis will be on making the college more accessible, with some facilities open to the community.

Sally Dicketts, the OCVC's principal and chief executive, said: "The building is designed so that people will be able to see what is going on in the college. The aim is people will feel it is part of the community, rather than something tagged on."

She believed that the college would make a significant contribution to the local economy, playing an important long-term role in creating a trained workforce.

The principal said: "Often here in Oxford, people look to the university. But for the average person in the street wanting to up-skill, Oxford University is not the place to go. They go to their local further education college.

"Our aim over the next three to four years is to become outstanding and you cannot be outstanding if you're not teaching in world-class facilities."

There is also expected to be a 20 per cent increase in student numbers.

She said the upkeep of existing buildings was already proving costly. The college presently faced having to spend £100,000 repairing the roofs of its two Oxford colleges. Their combined number of students is about 10,000.

Blackbird Leys represents the third phase of a £118m redevelopment plan, which is set to be one of the largest undertaken in the UK by a college of further education.

About £33m is to be spent redeveloping the Banbury campus. Work will begin on the Oxpens campus next summer, with construction work on the Blackbird Leys campus in 2009. Both the Blackbird Leys and Oxpens scheme will be dependent on a substantial contribution from the Learning and Skills Council.

The Oxpens campus is also to be completely developed, with the sprawling collection of dated buildings replaced by an iconic glass-fronted structure.

About a third of the city-centre site is to be sold for housing, retail and office use. The college is proposing a public market place in front of a modern building beside the Castle Mill Stream.