‘It is absolutely misguided to contemplate using Temple Quarter for student housing’

Recent news of proposals to construct a 16 storey tower block to house students at St Phillip’s Marsh, as part of the wider Temple Quarter regeneration programme, will probably result in a city wide conversation about tall buildings.

I feel that we need to be discussing whether student accommodation is the best use for this land.

Bristol City Council, like most other English councils, has had to raise council tax in order to be able to continue delivering the services we have come to expect.

Many of the less essential services come at an additional cost or have been scrapped altogether due to deliberate and calculated underfunding and underinvestment from successive Conservative central governments over the last 13 years.

Some 480 student rooms could be built as part of the development – image: Conversation PR

The mayor and his cabinet are the first to remind us of this bleak national outlook whenever citizens or opposition councillors complain about or criticise what the mayor and his cabinet are doing.

It has to be acknowledged that this current Labour administration has managed to make some impressive achievements locally in spite of the dire circumstances nationally; but are they really doing all they can to make life easier for the Bristolians they have been elected to represent?

Purpose-built student accommodation in theory means that many of the houses in areas like Kingsdown, Cotham or Clifton, currently occupied by students who pay no council tax, could be freed up and placed back on the private rental market for tenants who are eligible to pay council tax.

However, this proposed accommodation is nowhere near several of the university of Bristol’s existing campuses and nowhere near the University of the West of England’s campuses.

Surely the council should be ensuring that all homes built on land in inner city urban areas has the potential to raise revenue for the council in the form of council tax to deliver services? The mayor and his cabinet remind us regularly that there is a lack of funding after all.

A 16 storey tower block for student accommodation will raise absolutely no money for the council. Meanwhile the supply of housing will continue to get smaller as the population grows.

When I last spoke to cabinet member for housing Tom Renhard back in November 2022 he told me that there were 19,000 households on the waiting list for social housing. When I first started engaging in local democracy shortly after Marvin Rees became mayor that figure was 12,000.

The development site is next to the ramp leading up to the St Philip’s Footbridge, colloquially known as ‘the bridge to nowhere’ – photo: Martin Booth

Frankly it seems absolutely misguided to me that we as a city are even contemplating using Temple Quarter for student housing when there are so many people who are able to pay council tax in need of a place to call home.

A lack of supply and an increase in demand for housing has pushed rents in this city to unprecedented levels.

The global Covid 19 pandemic has meant that the need for student accommodation and office space has lessened.

The 500 homes currently proposed for St Phillip’s Marsh is unambitious to say the least.

With the housing list having now reached nearly 20,000 it really is time for council homes to be built on a scale like no other seen before; and Temple Quarter would be the perfect place to build sustainable, affordable homes.

Are offices which will probably sit empty with ‘to let’ boards as the effects of the recession and aftermath of the pandemic take hold really the best we can do with this space? Or student accommodation which will generate no revenue for the council to deliver services?

I think we all know the answer to those two questions and I wake up each morning in a world where these battles take place in the hope that one day common sense will prevail and that those in power will always endeavour to put people before profit.

Main photo: AHMM

Read next:

• Plans for 600 bed student accommodation unveiled
• ‘Huge opportunity’ to shape future of Temple Island
• ‘Major milestone’ in Temple Quarter regeneration project

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