A row has erupted over plans to establish another purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) development in Bristol. Developer Harringay Real Estate wishes to convert St Joseph's care home on Cotham Hill, which shut in 2025, into 132 student flats owing to what it has characterised as an 'acute shortage' of PBSAs in Bristol.
Ant Draper, from the Cotham Hill Community Group, dismissed the claim Bristol was short of accommodation. 'Bristol used to be a City with a University, it's now a University with a City attached,' he said. 'The council claims to prioritise inclusivity and balanced communities with an emphasis on being age-friendly. This proposal discriminates against everyone who is not a student. This development is in the heart of a residential area which already houses the highest proportion of students at 37.5%. The addition of 132 more will make the imbalance far worse.'
Bristol City Council has not yet reached a determination on whether to grant Harringay's application to transform St Joseph's into student flats, reports Bristol Live. Prior to its closure, the care home was operated by Catholic organisation the Little Sisters of the Poor for 156 years.
Bosses at commercial real estate firm CBRE recently claimed there was an 'estimated unmet demand' of more than 31,700 students who could be looking for PBSA spaces in Bristol, with the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England continually expanding. The former is set to welcome up to 4,600 students and 360 staff to its new £500m Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus in September.
Numerous schemes currently being built or progressing through the planning system in Bristol, including the development on the former Haymarket Holiday Inn site which will become the city's tallest building, are dominated by student flats.
'The St Joseph's site is exactly the kind of sustainable, discrete and well-located site where this should be addressed,' a spokesperson for Harringay Real Estate said. 'It sits within a short walk of the University of Bristol's main campus in Clifton, with direct access to amenities, shops and public transport, in an area where demand from students is already highest. If accommodation is not delivered in locations like this, students will not disappear—they will simply be pushed into surrounding residential streets, increasing pressure on family housing and intensifying HMO concentrations. Concerns relating to this type of unmanaged HMO accommodation was also a prominent theme raised by local residents in our pre-application consultation.'
Harringay Real Estate was only registered as a company in December and does not have a website. It is based in Taunton and has two directors, Katharine Hanson and Edward Khodabandehloo.
Bristol City Council received the application to change the use of St Joseph's on April 30. At the time of writing, the application had 59 objections (although one of these was mistakenly labelled as a message of support on the council's planning portal) with just one public comment in support of the proposal.
Beyond students, the remainder of the city continues to experience the severe impact of a housing crisis, with rent and property prices amongst the most costly in the country. More than 18,000 people remain on the waiting list for social housing despite the council recently removing approximately 4,000 individuals who hadn't applied for a home in at least two years from the list.
The CHCG would prefer the building to be converted into mixed-use housing. 'Bristol claims to be a creative city (so) be creative and create a much-needed multi generational development,' Mr Draper said. 'Our message to the developer: Don't just go for the quick and easy money, do something worthwhile which contributes to our community. I strongly object to this proposal because Cotham and Clifton Down are already very very unbalanced communities where up to 37.5% of the population are students which has considerable knock on effects to transport (and to) services like hospitals, police and waste collection.'
A public consultation regarding the proposed alterations to the St Josephs site continues until June 10.
