HELEN Parr says her role model is the Duke of Wellington, victor of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At first sight the petite recently-appointed principal of Oaklands College has little in common with the Iron Duke, but may soon need both his toughness and his tenacity.

For this new broom is preparing to sweep away two thirds of the Oaklands College city centre campus and replace it with housing in a major shake up that is bound to raise some hackles.

She says the sale to developers Fairview Homes will bring in millions of pounds for Oaklands to spend redeveloping its campuses in St Albans, Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield and Borehamwood to turn them into a state-of-the-art seat of further education for the new millennium.

"The big job now is taking these plans forward and making them happen which is a very exciting prospect," says Ms Parr, previously principal and chief executive of Colchester Institute where her brief was also to see through redevelopment plans - and where she trod on some toes in the process.

"I applied for the job here because of the redevelopment plans. I knew they were at the development stage and here was an opportunity to step into a big college with some big plans."

She started the job in the autumn, taking over a hot seat vacated by previous principal Liz Cristofoli who left "for personal reasons" following a troubled tenure that saw her castigated over plans to close their Harpenden campus - abandoned following an energetic protest campaign - strike action by lecturers in May, 50 staff redundancies this year, and a financial crisis exacerbated by the government clawing back £1.5m funding due to falling student rolls.

But Helen Parr says she starts with a clean slate and in January the college and Fairview will jointly submit planning proposals to St Albans council.

Ms Parr says that the thrust of the college redevelopment will be to create flexible, modern accommodation suited to the modern student. "The feedback we are getting from students is that they like the courses they are on, but they want better facilities," she said.

Under their plans Oaklands would keep the triangular front site on the corner of St Peter's Road and Hatfield Road in the city centre with its futuristic reception and multi-storey building currently used by construction students.

The larger slice to the rear, on Lemsford and Manor Roads, with several obsolete old buildings, will be bought by Fairview to create a residential complex.

The 1,000 or so construction students will depart for the college's main campus on the Hatfield side of St Albans, to study skills from bricklaying to gas fitting, on a site shared by a herd of cows, crops and farm animals, for this site is mainly an agricultural college.

Their vacated building in the city centre, and a proposed new one, will be used to expand the computer and IT department, boost art and design with courses such as fashion textiles, expanded performing arts and media studies. A major learning resource area will be developed.

Ms Parr says that above all it will be a flexible campus, making full use of new technology to expand both what it can offer, and student numbers. Distance learning will play a part in that "though technology will never replace tutors" said Ms Parr, who is not planning any further lecturer redundancies unless dictated by demand for course changes.

This term student numbers across all campuses, at about 15,000, are similar to last year's and she intends to build on this.

The main Oaklands campus will be renovated, and the construction department expanded to meet a demand from building companies for more skilled operatives.

She says initial staff response to the blueprint has been positive. "Now we are trying to work out the time scheduling to cause as little disruption to students as possible. We are having to look at interim buildings - it looks like a three to four year programme."

At the same time she is also having to learn to work with the newly set up Learning Skills Council which earlier this year took over responsibility for all post 16 education in the county.

"We are working with them on all sorts of issues - our construction courses are a good example of where further education colleges really do fill skills gaps, and probably the most critical need is IT skills, in St Albans there are large numbers of service oriented small businesses who need people with IT in almost every area."

She believes the "central challenge" in further education today is the provision of lifelong learning that fills people's aspirations at different stages - those who left school without proper qualifications, women returning to work after having families, retraining following redundancy or the desire for a career change.

"That is what education is all about, a range of opportunities in the workplace. I have changed careers quite dramatically, and more and more people will change.

"The world is fast moving and the expectation now is that people will move from job to job and career to career so for me further education is about opportunity and giving people confidence to make themselves as flexible, and education as accessible, as possible. That is the big challenge."

As she says, she made a career change 20 years ago that took her from marketing in the tobacco industry into teaching, via a break when she had two sons, now in their twenties.

Starting as a college lecturer at Harlow, she became county marketing co-ordinator for Essex education authority, then associate principal at Cambridge Regional College, deputy principal at North Herts College from '91-'97 followed by her four years in Colchester.

"It was a slightly unusual route, though quite a lot of lecturers in further education come in through their professional qualifications."

To relax, she lists gardening (she looks forward to starting on the garden of the house she has just found off Holywell Hill), going to the theatre, visiting art galleries - and riding a motor bike which is bound to earn her street cred with her students.

*Open days at Oaklands to find out more about courses available are next Tuesday, November 6, 4-8pm at St Albans city campus, November 14 and 17 at the main campus between St Albans and Hatfield. More information on www.oaklands.ac.uk or the helpline 01727 737080.