THE first university technical college to open in East Lancashire has run into financial difficulties just 12 months after opening.

Visions Learning Trust was given a £160,000 loan by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) for its first year, another £230,000 handout for 2014-15 and wants a further £95,000, the year after that, as part of its ‘recovery plan’.

Now the EFA has issued a ‘financial notice to improve’ to the institution, housed in Burnley’s Victoria Mill and sponsored by Blackburn-based Training 2000.

Agency bosses now want ‘unqualified accounts’ filed for 2013-14 and a fresh recovery plan outlining how the £95,000 additional payout for next year can be avoided for the college, which specialises in offering engineering and construction training alongside A-level and GCSE qualifications.

Tony Foot, acting director for the EFA’s Academies and Maintained Schools Group, said in a letter: “In the event that the trust fails to meet the requirements of this notice we will need to consider contractual intervention options set out in the trust’s funding agreement.”

The last filed accounts, for 2013-14, showed Burnley Council had ploughed £10.73million, into buildings, fixtures and fittings, and shared in a £144,469 total, with Training 2000, for ‘gifts in kind’. Another £188,000 was came in Department of Education grants.

In a letter to parents, Visions managing director Martin Callagher said there was ‘no need to be concerned’.

He wrote: “It is a challenge starting up any new business and we are no different in that regard to newly-formed companies in the country.”

Mr Callagher insisted the notice will have no impact on students’ learning and said he was proud that 96 per cent of learners who left the college last year had secured apprenticeships or gone on to further or higher education.

He added: “The (notice) is largely based on the fact that numbers in the UTC are still relatively small compared to a secondary school. This means that we have to provide all the buildings, maintenance and staffing, but without the financial income that a large number of learners provides.”

College bosses say intake numbers of 14 to 19-year-olds ‘doubled’ for 2014-15 – the initial intake for Visions, which should eventually have a 800-strong roll, was 74 for 2013-14.

The college is backed by Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley and Lancashire Councils, with leading lights of industry such as BAE Systems, Cobham, Chubb, Aircelle, Rolls-Royce and Fort Vale listed as supporters.