Student accommodation under consideration

As Belfast City Council prepares to reach a determination on five of the 16 proposals for private purpose built managed student accommodation tonight, one developer UniCiti says there is plenty of scope for more such schemes.

The Harrogate developer has brought forward £43m plans for managed student residences at York Street and Little Patrick Street, close to the new Ulster University campus.

According to partner Paul Wilkinson, if all 7500 managed beds were approved it would account for just 23% of available student beds.

At this capacity, two independent reports suggest that Belfast would still lag behind other similarly sized university cities.

“When we announced our plans in August we claimed that Belfast was playing catch-up with other modern universities, where purpose built managed student accommodation is the norm.

“A study by Liverpool City Council found the typical saturation point for managed accommodation was circa 40% of all student beds in a city. This is the balancing point in demand from universities, parents, students and overseas learners for this accommodation, with proposals from developers.

“Our proposals at York St and Little Patrick Street amount to a little more than 2% of all student beds in Belfast.”

At present, he said that despite having two large universities just 3,759 managed beds are available or approved.

“We understand that not all proposals can, or will, be approved and built.

“However, if all 7,500 proposed managed beds were given permission they would together account for only 23% of student beds.”

With so many students living at home or in houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) the council had previously benchmarked Belfast, against Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Heriberto Cuanalo from Collegiate AC, who will manage the two schemes if approved, added:

“The lack of sufficient purpose built and professionally managed accommodation can cause issues for students, parents, universities and the city as a whole. Across the UK we manage thousands of student beds across 22 university cities. Issues that can arise in student areas such as car parking, noise and other anti-social behaviour can all be minimised by us in a way that private landlord accommodation cannot.”

UniCiti’s proposals for a £28m development on York Street have been recommend for approval at Belfast City Council’s planning committee.

A second proposal at Little Patrick Street will construct a £15m building made up of 380 studios.