Aw, I remember you being 14 and telling us you were doing your ICT homework, now you're all growed up!

It's worth looking at other places if you're thinking of doing a HND or full degree - but then you have to look at your reasons for going local. When me and my friends were looking at going to Uni, no-one picked anywhere local. We wanted to go to the best place for our chosen fields, and moving away and becoming independant was part of that by necessity. As long as you can fund yourself in some way (I went to Uni when the local authorities paid your fees and gave you a grant, so I managed to scrape by), it's an option you might like to consider.

Also, I don't know how valuable degrees are nowadays. I did a sandwich degree, which means I did 2 years at Uni, then I did a year placed in industry doing actual work (and had to write reports on my progress for Uni), then went back to do my final year. Out of the 150 people on my course (BSc in Computer Science), 142 did a year in industry as part of the course. After we got our degrees, most of us got fully-paid proper degree-related jobs within the next few months but the ones who hadn't done the year out found it very difficult, because they had no practical experience (my degree was very theory-based). If you have experience in the field you want to go into, you have a much greater chance of getting a well-paid job at the end of your studies because of this.

Although saying that, the fact that you're going back to college shows employers you're dedicated to what you want to do which is a very powerful thing to be discussing in job interviews.