Campaigners battling to save a �5.5million college campus from closure just three years after it opened will be taking to the streets on Saturday (19). A rally called No, No, No to Kilburn College Closure will take place on Kilburn High Road at 11am.

Campaigners battling to save a �5.5million college campus from closure just three years after it opened will be taking to the streets on Saturday (19).

A rally called 'No, No, No to Kilburn College Closure' will take place on Kilburn High Road at 11am.

The demonstration is against controversial plans by the College of North West London (CNWL) to close their award-winning building on Priory Park Road.

Organised by the University and College Union (UCU), the aptly-named pressure group 'Save Kilburn Centre, the Brent branch of National Union of Teachers (NUT) and Brent Fightback, the protest starts outside the earmarked campus moves on to the busy thoroughfare, and will u-turn where the high road turns into Maida Vale, ending in Kilburn Square.

A host of speakers from all walks of lives will take to the stand and air their concerns over the closure and the detrimental effect it will have on the area.

Indro Sen, CNWL's branch secretary of UCU has been at the forefront of the fight to keep the campus open.

He said: "People of Kilburn, students, residents, activists and all those who care about educational should make every effort to come out in numbers to this demonstration.

"Only by doing this will the governors be persuaded that not only is it important for the college campus to remain open and continue to serve the diverse student population of Kilburn but the campus remaining open is essential for the regeneration of the area.

"On behalf of the union and other activists from all major political parties and most of all the students that we serve, I would like to thank the Willesden Times for highlighting the plight of our students whose well being is threatened by this ill advised and hastily arrived at decision."

In March, the CNWL announce from August it would be suspending lesson at the campus for a year to balance their books after the Government slashed its funding.

The doomed four-storey building opened in 2007 and the following year it came second in the Royal Institute of British Architects and LSC Further Education Design Excellence Awards.

Former London Mayor and Brent-resident Ken Livingstone praised it for its ecological credentials.

The college, which has other campuses in Dudden Hill Lane, Willesden, and Wembley Park Drive, Wembley, claimed they had no choice as they were facing a �3.2 financial blackhole.

In addition to the closure plans, the college also wielded the axe on scores of popular courses including all their BTEC sports programmes and they made scores of lecturers and administration staff redundant.

But, the Times discovered the college owned an unused seven-storey office block in the heart of Wembley that they were refusing to sell even though it was worth around �4m.

In the run-up to the General Election candidates from all political parties vowed to join the fight to keep the campus open at a packed public meeting.

Hank Roberts, Brent's secretary for the NUT and Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "Education is under mortal threat in this country.

"What is going in Brent is obviously a part of a severe Government attack on higher education.

"I want people to show their concern for education in this country and particularly in Brent."

No, No, No to Kilburn College Closure will take place outside the CNWL's Kilburn campus on Priory park Road, Kilburn, at 11am.