In just over seven months time MidKent College students will be moving into their new home.

The £86 million Medway Campus in Prince Arthur Road, Gillingham, is nearing completion and will be officially opening its doors at the start of the next academic year in September.

The innovative campus on the Lower Lines will replace the Horsted and City Way Centres in Chatham and Rochester, both of which will close at the end of the summer term.

The site will offer all the same courses currently being run at Horsted and City Way but will be able to accommodate almost 30 per cent more students.

The new campus will have three main buildings linked by two transparent pavilions containing the social centres of the college - the reception and refreshment area, a library and a resource centre.

The site will have 100 classrooms fitted with the latest technology, some with purpose-built facilities such as plumbing workshops, training kitchens, hair design salons and sound-proof music studios.

The building work, being undertaken by Kier Build, is on course for completion in April and staff will then spend the summer moving in.

Kier Build has used the latest construction techniques to save time and energy during the project, which began in October 2007.

The building work faced 14 weeks of delays when a Napoleonic listening post and First World War tunnels were discovered on site. The listening post has been preserved but the tunnels had to be dug out for safety reasons.

The opening of the new campus marks the start of a period of modernisation for MidKent College which will continue with improvements at its Oakwood Park Centre in Maidstone.

Principal, Stephen Grix, said: “The new Medway Campus will provide our students with learning facilities that rival some of the best in the UK, giving the people of Medway what they need and deserve; better access to top-quality teaching and learning, and improved progression to higher education.”