Plans submitted to build student accommodation on Mini dealership site

A Mini dealership in Bath could be demolished to make way for two five-storey blocks to house nearly 300 students.

How the student housing on the Lower Bristol Road could look | Image © Dick Lovett

The Dick Lovett site on the Lower Bristol Road sits within the city’s flagship Western Riverside regeneration project to create a new residential quarter.

The firm is planning to level the Mini dealership, an office and a warehouse to build 290 studio and cluster student bedrooms, with 1,100sqm of retail space on the ground floor.

The plans say: “The application would provide a significant number of student bedrooms in a highly sustainable urban location.

Image © Dick Lovett

“The provision of purpose-built student accommodation in this location would potentially free up/limit the demand for larger family sized dwellings elsewhere in the city which are occupied by HMOs and thus help alleviate pressures on the existing housing market.

“As the proposed development does not include any on-site car parking provision, in line with the outline planning permission, it will have very limited impact on local traffic flows and any resulting addition of vehicular emissions.”

Image © Dick Lovett

There would not be any car parking but there will be space for the students to store 145 bikes.

Bath and North East Somerset Council will decide the fate of the application.

The wider Western Riverside development will provide up to 2,281 homes, plus shops, restaurants and student accommodation.

Stephen Sumner, Local Democracy Reporter