Universities Is rapid growth fuelling city's housing crisis?

As around 70,000 students prepare to start or resume their studies in Bristol, Tristan Cork looks at the growth of the city's two major universities

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A NEW academic year is about to begin at Bristol's two universities, and more students than ever before could be arriving in the city.

But all this year, and for the past few years since the Covid pandemic, there has been a growing disquiet. Every week, it seems, there's a new plan for a new PBSA - a purpose-built student accommodation - block somewhere in Bristol.

The larger the two universities have grown, the more impact they are having on Bristol, its social, economic, residential and cultural life. The closure of Motion Night club earlier this summer, as its location became surrounded by student flats, was held up as a symbol of this takeover, but it is all over the city.

Drivers on the St Philips Causeway flyover will have noticed tall tower blocks now dominating the view from the road next to the Feeder Canal. The view for people on the platforms at Temple Meads was once a citywide embarrassment - the apocalyptic shell of the former Royal Mail sorting office building has now been replaced by a gleaming new university complex.

In Bedminster, students arrived for the first time south of the river in numbers - almost a thousand spent their first academic year wandering around the delights of East Street - and work began last week on buildings next to the railway line on Malago Road that will accommodate almost 500 more.

In Filton, the UWE campus at Frenchay has been transformed, and now what was once a B&Q is due to open as Kingfisher Court, more student flats, in a year's time.

This summer, the population of Bristol is estimated to have reached half a million for the first time in the city's history. And much of that growth has come from the expansion of both the city's universities.