Luxury spa to be operated by trainee therapists as part of vocational student campus

Sunderland College’s £29m new vocational campus in the city centre is set to feature a luxury spa, which will be operated by a spa manager who will supervise students working towards the City & Guilds NVQ Level 3 in Spa Therapy.

The UK spa is one of many facilities that will be open to the public at the 12,500sq m (134,549sq ft) vocational campus that is set to accommodate up to 2,000 students when it opens in Q2 of 2016.

The new spa, being built by DaleSauna, will offer an overflow spa pool, sauna, salt steamroom, aromatherapy room, rasul mud treatment room, experience showers, ice feature, reflexology walk and tiled heated loungers.

“We have designed a spa that can not only deliver the requirements of the NVQ Level 3 Spa Therapy curriculum, but also compares favourably to some of the finest hotel spas around,” said Gerard McCarthy, sales director at DaleSauna.

DaleSauna’s interior designer Lynn Russell Hanson is in charge of making sure the finishes on the spa’s surfaces will stand the test of time. This is because the spa will be open to members of the public, offering Caci treatments and a variety of massage and body therapies using skincare products by Dermalogica.

Architecture firm IBI Taylor Young is in charge of the campus’ design and BAM Construction is building the campus – which is being funded by a number of sources, including the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), Sunderland City Council and College reserves.

In addition to this ‘spa academy’, the new campus will house vocational courses transferred from the college’s Hylton Campus, including courses about hair and beauty, a bakery, travel agency, restaurant, manufacturing and engineering facility and a car repair service.