A new £50 million building at Bradford College will be finished two weeks ahead of schedule and ready to welcome students in September.

Many of the current college classes and facilities will be moving into The David Hockney Building over the summer after contractor BAM finishes in July.

Workers are currently fitting out classrooms and laboratories and adding the decorative features to the 23,000 square metre project, which has been funded through college reserves and a government loan.

The state-of-the-art building, on Great Horton Road, was named after Bradford artist David Hockney and a competition is currently under way for students to create artwork to adorn the six-storey building.

The college is currently spread out over several blocks and when the new building opens some of the existing structures, including the Westbrook building, will be demolished.

The towering structure, next to the new build, will come down in September and turned into a multi-tiered open green space by the end of March.

The McMillan and Appleton buildings will be sold for non-college use.

However because of the move to fewer buildings, the college has announced job cuts in cleaners and maintenance staff. Talks are currently ongoing with staff and unions.

The Lister Building, Bolton Royd and Trinity Green Campus will remain and the Old Building will now house the Bradford College Film School. The college has planned a £2.8m refurbishment and extension of the Lister Building which will accommodate a library, cafe and exhibition area.

Up to 5,000 people can be accommodated in the new building and the college hopes the state-of-the- art facility attracts more people to choose Bradford College to study.

With completion just weeks away the building, which will be delivered within budget, is starting to take shape.

Project manager for BAM Jason Pink said the building would be handed over in early July, adding: “We are intending to hand the building over two weeks earlier than contracted. The project is all on budget, it has been really well controlled.”

The building will feature open plan libraries, a cavernous atrium and solar panels on the roof. It also features a rooftop terrace that doubles as a classroom where pupils can work on a roof top garden as well as see up close how a solar panel works.

There will be campus wide WiFi, with students able to use technology in every part of the building.

Many of the college’s classes focus on vocational training and the new build will include training kitchens to give pupils hands on experience not previously available in the college’s current buildings.

Some of the building’s new classrooms have even been designed to look like commercial shop fronts, including hair and beauty salons and a restaurant and café, which are all open to the public and accessible from Carlton Street.

By the time the Hockney Building is complete, around 3,000 people will have worked on it and BAM says that 85 per cent of those live within a 50 mile radius.

Much of the stone for the building came from a quarry in Brighouse.