Firstly, let me thank you for clicking on this page and your effort to understand the point of this petition, it really is appreciated.

Let me start by explaining a few very important points about why this decision absolutely should not go ahead…

· A lot of the students currently at the college already travel from afar to come and learn the subject they love, this includes, Wales, the outskirts of Chester and Northwich, the next nearest place to learn is Birkenhead or Liverpool which as you can imagine is extremely inconvenient.

· Not only are you letting us down you are letting the lovely, hardworking staff down who have put in so many years work and effort to produce fantastic Signers who have gone on to do amazing jobs with their skills and help so many deaf people.

· BSL is now recognised as an official language and there is currently talk of this being taught in schools and brought in as a GCSE... ask yourself, how is this meant to happen when there is no local facility for people to learn BSL in order to teach in schools?

· Its estimated 1 in 6 people are deaf to some degree which translates to 10 million people in the UK alone.

· Cheshire College - South and West constantly preaches about equality and diversity, yet this is the worst possible decision you could make for the college and the deaf community that work and learn within it

Please sign our petition and stop the closure of the Deaf Studies Department in Cheshire College - South and West.

Thank you on behalf of the students at West Cheshire College, our very supportive friends, families and colleagues, the general public who have taken an interest in this matter and most importantly, the Deaf Community.