The news that millions of pounds of redevelopment funding is not coming the way of Abingdon & Witney College is nothing short of a hammer blow.

The further education college was expecting a helping hand from the Learning and Skills Council for a £30m overhaul of its Witney campus, on which had already started work.

Instead, what it received yesterday amounts to an almighty kick in the teeth.

Students, tutors and Witney residents with nothing to do with the college were united in their disappointment at being let down at the11th hour.

The ‘will they, won’t they’ saga of funding for the college project has been rumbling on for months, with shafts of light one moment and dark clouds the next.

This time it appears the college has finally been put out of its agony, after being told it will not get a share of extra Government money for college developments.

Whether the college can appeal remains to be seen.

College principal Teresa Kelly didn’t mince her words when she described the setback as “devastating news”.

Witney MP David Cameron has waded into the row and promised to see what he can do, but it remains to be seen whether he, or anyone else, will be able to do anything other than offer predictable words of sympathy.

What is for sure is that this decision is a dark day for further education in Oxfordshire.