A new block of student accommodation has got the go ahead near the centre of Bath, despite warnings that students will not want to live in it.
Berkeley House in The Square on the Lower Bristol Road | Image © Google Street View / Google 2024
Developers have been granted planning permission to turn Lower Bristol Road office block Berkeley House into accommodation for 34 students.
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s planning committee approved the plans on 12th February after it was told: “There are simply no valid grounds to refuse this application”.
The block will contain six cluster flats and three studio apartments. Because developer Eagle One Estates Ltd has no agreement with the university, they will not be allowed to house first-year students in the accommodation. It will only be for second years or above.
But planning committee member Deborah Collins (Widcombe & Lyncombe, Liberal Democrat) said that planning policy’s view of what second and third year students wanted did not line up with reality.
The councillor said: “Anecdotally, any student I speak to … wishes in the second or third year to move into houses rather than cluster flats, which tend to be suitable for first years.”
She added: “I understand all the points made about the facilities being the same, if not better, than HMOs.
“But what drives students into houses is that they want to live in something that looks like a house, not something that looks like a flat. That is where first year students are.”
Councillor Shaun Hughes (Midsomer Norton North, Independent) added: “I do have concerns that they are going to come back in a year’s time and say we haven’t got any second and third year students who want to be here so we want to convert it to first year students.”
He said the council clearly had no grounds to refuse the plans to convert the office, but warned: “This potentially loses workspace for 86 jobs and a loss of £194k in business rates.”
Councillor Ian Halsall (Oldfield Park, Liberal Democrat), who normally chairs the planning committee but temporarily stepped back from the role to speak against the plans as the local councillor, warned: “The Lower Bristol Road has seen a proliferation of purpose-built student accommodation over the last few years, stretching all the way from Twerton towards Churchill Bridge — and in fact even along Pulteney Road in the next ward.
“We have seen a complete transformation in parts of this area as commercial industrial buildings make way for multi-level buildings that are mostly providing privately owned and managed student accommodation to meet the seemingly never-ending growth of our student population.”
He warned that the amount of purpose-built student accommodation in the areas was essentially “creating a student campus by stealth”.
But he warned the city’s lack of affordable places for non–students to live meant it was hard for graduates to stay in the city.
Mr Halsall said: “Because of the extortionate cost of housing within and around the city, we may be facilitating the development of academic, artistic, and athletic brains benefitting as a community from the contribution they make, but we are ultimately seeing a brain drain.”
Berkeley House was built over 30 years ago just on the other side of the Lower Bristol Road from Newark Works. It is currently occupied by local company BMT, but now they are relocating to Bath Quays South and the building owners want to turn the building into student accommodation.
The changes to Berkeley House would mainly be internal, except for some replacement of windows and installation of solar panels or air source heat pumps.
A statement submitted with the application said: “The site occupies a highly accessible location close to the city centre core, and is well positioned to serve the requirements of both of the city’s universities.
“It is situated in a transport corridor in an area of mixed uses comprising commercial and, increasingly, residential uses, including student accommodation.”
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
