Large Student Residences

5 Responses to Large Student Residences

1. Pingback: Planned student residences: latest position | Durham City Neighbourhood Planning Forum

2. Mike Costello says:

   July 16, 2015 at 8:09 am

   PBSAs need to be in the right place (especially with a collegiate university) with proper management to protect both students (10% have counselling issues during their stay) and residents.
   Village in the viaduct supposed to have management but local residents struggling to get resolution of anti social behaviour problems.
   This is never the case with university accommodation which always has round the clock management.
3. Jackie says:

   July 15, 2015 at 7:39 pm

   Janice ought to consider that supporting proposals in a blanket way ought to be avoided, especially when they are featured in some key areas of Durham City which require high quality development to improve degraded and unbalanced communities. Surrounding the City with a ring of blocks of private student halls can only create problems without necessarily solving the problems of areas with saturated levels of student housing. Unless you force students by legislation to occupy private student halls, you cannot guarantee that they will give up house sharing for rooms. There has been no market research to suggest that they will. The halls originally targeted University growth. Now Durham University has decided not to expand, the new halls are targeting student “choice”. The problem is that overseas investors are fuelling the frenzy. They are being misled about local conditions. A collapse of the market is the most likely outcome. Speculators want profits not social experiments. Already 3,000 new beds have been passed, more than enough to test the waters.
4. Bill Williamson says:

   January 11, 2015 at 5:29 pm

   Good detective work!

   There is feeding frenzy among developers fuelled by the attractiveness of Durham University to students, low interest rates, blockages in the construction of new housing on account of high levels of personal debt and therefore limited opportunities to acquire mortgages and a deficit of imagination in the County Council about what a city might be. There is also fear about the costs of defending appeals if planning applications are turned down.
   Student accommodation on the scale proposed is economically unsustainable and not in the long term interests of the city or, indeed, of the university. It fails to meet the housing needs of the city and will not, as claimed, make HMOs available for families. Students like to live in houses and that section of the market will respond to the new private accommodation by reducing rents.
   We have to press the council to have the courage not to permit it on planning grounds, especially the long-term sustainability of the city.
   • janice says:

     January 22, 2015 at 4:22 pm

     Lowering of student house rents will put less attractive properties out of use, and ultimately onto the market. Then these will be available for family occupation. Meanwhile students will be in more appropriate rooms/ flats and eye-sores around the city improved. The council it self says 4000 new home are needed. These developments will eventually release up to 1000 street houses onto the open single occupancy market, without the detriment to the greenbelt or historicity of the city, with the exception of Mount Oswald, which is approximately green field been golf course land. I would support all the proposals in town except Mount Oswald. If such sort-of-greenfield is to be built on in this more out-of-town area, let it be on actual university site land.