A COLLEGE has defended its decision to shut its permanent base in Blackbird Leys.

Abingdon and Witney College, who provide the adult learning service on behalf of the county council, will no longer offer a programme of free courses from the estate's library and have made its one member of staff redundant.

For the last two years, the college has offered lessons on topics such as web design, word processing, sculpture making and creative writing from the library.

But these have now been scrapped with a smaller range of classes taking place in the Oxford Academy and Blackbird Leys Community Centre instead.

The estate has a high proportion of people with few qualifications and 35.8 per cent of working age residents in the Leys have no GCSEs or equivalent, compared to 13.6 per cent in Oxford overall.

Along with the more creative courses offered, residents could also take lessons in improving their basic maths and English skills.

Ed Collett, the head of business development and marketing for the college, said: "Oxfordshire Adult Learning remains committed to offering a wide variety of engaging and inclusive courses throughout Oxfordshire now and in the future.

"We have planned more courses this year than ever before.

"Although we will no longer be leasing spaces at Blackbird Leys Library we will still deliver courses that meet the needs of the community at local, easy to access venues in Blackbird Leys.

"We always try to ensure we’re using venues and spaces that offer the best teaching and learning experience for our students in their own community.

"We have a large number of courses already planned to run in Blackbird Leys, including in venues such as Oxford Academy and Blackbird Leys Community Centre."