Havant and South Downs College (HSDC), which includes Alton College, has been placed under formal intervention by the Department for Education following “serious cashflow pressures” and an ‘inadequate’ financial health rating.

The Department for Education sent the Further Education Commissioner’s team to HSDC on May 1 after issuing a Financial Notice to Improve to the college on April 8.

It said this was because of “serious cashflow pressures” at the college and a financial health grade of ‘inadequate’ for the financial year ending in July 2024.

In a letter to Clive Dobbin, HSDC’s chair of governors, Alan Krikorian, deputy director of the Department for Education’s London, South East and East Anglia place based team, said: “This means that HSDC is now placed into formal intervention.

“We do not want colleges to remain in intervention for longer than is necessary and will assess when HSDC has made the necessary progress for this notice to improve to be lifted.

“The college has already engaged with the Further Education Commissioner and her team, who have started a curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support process and carried out a full health check.”

This development follows news about redundancies and course cuts across Alton, South Downs and Havant colleges to save HSDC £5 million in 2025-26 which was revealed in the Herald last week.

The principal and chief executive of HSDC is Mike Gaston. A full member of the board and chief accounting officer, he got the job in April 2015, four months after agreeing to step down as principal of Totton College near Southampton as it plunged into a similar financial crisis.

A series of damning financial reports on Totton College culminated in one in December 2014 in which sixth form commissioner Peter Mucklow said: “The college faces an immediate crisis in its cash position, which is worse than that predicted in the spring of 2014.”

Totton College’s fate was to be bought by national crime reduction charity Nacro in December 2015.

One Alton parent said: “Alton College was in the top ten in the country. Since the merger it has gone downhill. Most students want to go to Peter Symonds in Winchester nowadays. A high percentage of my son's year went there.”