The principal of City of Bath College has accused the Government of keeping it in the dark about a freeze on promised funding for its £68 million building project.

The college announced plans for a complete overhaul of its jaded Avon Street campus back in October, with funding due to be considered in December.

However, just before Christmas, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) halted the £2.3 billion Building Colleges for the Future (BCF) initiative.

Since then the college has been forced to wait, without knowing when or if the money will be approved.

Principal Matt Atkinson said: "I believe that we haven't been given the full story. Clearly if you are talking about a national budget of billions of pounds then someone somewhere must have been monitoring how this should be spent.

"To bring it to such an abrupt halt smacks of complete mismanagement. We do feel like we are being kept in the dark."

If the proposals had gone ahead as planned the college would be submitting a funding application in July, and completing the work by 2014.

Mr Atkinson said the scheme was not only essential for his students, but also the local economy, which would benefit from such an investment.

He said: "We had a very clear vision and strategy and it now looks as though we can't realise that.

"A building project such as this provides so much benefit to the community.

"For the students it means that we can expand our courses, it means we can enhance the quality of our facilities and the quality of the learning experience. That remains a priority for us.

"Also, we have got a building project worth £68 million and it would have been a major boost for the local construction industry."

The freeze on college funding comes at a time when Government money for schools has been brought forward a year to try to kickstart the economy.

City MP Don Foster has been supporting the college in its bid to get more information and expressed his disappointment at the way the issue had been handled.

He said: "We have got to the stage where the LSC is in total turmoil. Higher education has been the Cinderella of the education service for many years, but it serves thousands of people in our local area.

"The college desperately needs some up-to-date buildings, but it is now in this impossible position because of the Government's and the LSC's total lack of ability to get their act together."

The college's students' union president, Safiya Kinshasa, said the new buildings were needed.

She said: "It is a great shame because the college really needs new facilities.

"However, because so many other institutions are in the same position, I do not think the college should dwell on their financial problems but should concentrate even more on the quality of teaching."

The LSC has blamed the early success of the BCF project for causing more and more colleges to submit ambitious proposals, leading to a need for a review.

It added that eight colleges whose funding consideration was deferred from December had been given the go-ahead and it was now prioritising the other projects.

A statement said: "Clearly, there are more schemes currently presenting applications than can be funded in this spending round and not all schemes can be implemented in the original timescales envisaged."