WILTSHIRE College's Lackham College is set to become a regional centre of excellence for land-based studies following a £8.2m investment from the Local Growth Fund.

The money, is part of a £28m cash boost secured by the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership from the government, will go towards building a central hub at the Lackham campus next year, which will house the different departments.

"It is very exciting," principal and chief executive Amanda Burnside said. "Our campus as Lackham is very spread out at the moment so our central hub will bring together the different high tech curriculum areas. We intend to start building the centre in 2018 to complete it by 2022 but obviously we are fine tuning a lot of things at the moment.

"The project will enable us to expand our existing curriculum in land-based studies, animal science, agricultural engineering and to develop new curriculum in the food and drink manufacturing sectors."

The investment, which was announced by Communities and Local Government secretary Sajid Javid on Thursday, also includes a new sciences, engineering and higher education facilities at the Salisbury campus in the hopes of investing in skills.

The principal added: "The aim is that we become a regional centre for excellence for land-based studies. We are looking to address the growing need for people with a high need of skills in the land based sector.

"We identified in the strategy plan that there is a skills shortage and although the funding will generate new jobs, we will be supporting the skills gap."

Currently more than 1,800 pupils attend courses at Lackham but Wiltshire College anticipate that those numbers will double following the completed build.

She added: "We have four campuses in total and the investments we receive we have used to bring our campuses up to 21st century standard and in appropriate time."