Developers ponder converting student flats as demand drops

BUT THOUSANDS OF NEW SPACES STILL SET TO OPEN

- By OLIVER PRIDMORE

SOME of Nottingham’s student accommodation providers are already considering converting their buildings after the leader of the city council said demand was “cooling”.

Falling international student numbers and more choosing to live at home because of the rising cost of living are among the factors emptying the city’s student flats.

The city’s chief planner says the situation presents an “opportunity” to further increase the quality of accommodation and reduce the pressure on the housing market.

Paul Seddon, director of transport and planning at Nottingham City Council, says the aim has long been to “get ahead” of student demand.

Speaking about the last decade, he said: “The trajectory over that time had been pretty consistently of strong growth of student numbers, not just in Nottingham but across the university cities. We've got two fantastic, world-renowned universities and they're a really positive thing on lots of levels for the city. They're really attractive for students to want to come here.

“The desire of the city council and the city was to have a greater degree of control and limit that imbalance in some of the traditional housing areas. There weren't many levers that we could pull.

“Because that was proving to be quite a challenge for those communities, and we could see that the trajectory was almost certainly going to be a steady but quite significant growth for university students coming into Nottingham, that was why it was a very enthusiastic strategy of supporting purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA).”

The council has carried out annual occupancy surveys of the city’s PBSA market since 2014 and the vacancy rate for the academic year starting in September 2023 was just 3.5%. That shot up to 11.2% - the highest figure since surveys began - for the academic year starting in September last year.