AN ABERGAVENNY community group is holding a public meeting calling for The Hill College to be kept for education.

The college shut in August and the group, Bryn y Cwm Community Forum, is calling for the campus to continue to be used for learning.

The group held a meeting back in June following the announcement of the closure and the latest one will see what progress has been made and what options are available going forward.

Last month, Coleg Gwent rejected a bid to turn the site into a ballet school.

Principal Howard Burton said a bid by Dr Olinga Ta’eed, chairman of the board of trustees at Mulberry House, which runs a residential environmental study centre in Abergavenny, fell short of the asking price.

An alternative to be discussed at the meeting is taking The Hill into public ownership through a community land trust scheme, keeping the focus on educational use.

The closure was announced as Coleg Gwent aims to save £3.5 million.

Ebbw Vale's Stepping Stones Nursery was also scrapped to save cash.

This followed a 7.43 percent cut in Assembly funding for all post-16 education in Wales. Closing these two buildings is expected to help save more than £1 million.

The college, which was costing Coleg Gwent £500,000 a year to subsidise, closed its doors on August 31.

Since closing, the former college has been secured and contractors are maintaining the 21-acre site, which includes the Victorian walled garden.

Coleg Gwent is now in the process of surveying the buildings as part of its disposal strategy.

Monmouthshire council agreed to lift a covenant restricting The Hill to educational use until 2016 in exchange for land at Coleg Gwent’s Rhadyr campus in Usk.

This means the college could not sell the building to developers interested in using the site for other uses.

The meeting is on November 12 at 7.30pm at Mulberry House, Pen y Pound, Abergavenny.