Whether you’re a first-year student moved into halls in Nottingham for the first time, a second-year living in student housing in the city or a postgraduate staying in third-party accommodation, we need you to tell the council what you expect from accommodation. They’ll use this to make sure the guidance they issue for developers of student accommodation meets your needs, and the needs of future students.
What’s this all about?
Nottingham City Council is about to issue some new guidance for developers of what’s known as ‘Purpose Built’ Student Accommodation (typically shortened to PBSA), or what you might think of as Halls of Residence run by one of the unis in the city or by a third-party provider such as UPP, Student Roost or Unite.
We want you to have a think about what the minimum standards can be. You can comment on what the council has already included (see below) or just add your own thoughts and experience into the box. The link to respond is here:
Submit your thoughts (Closes Tuesday 8 October 2024)
Even if you can’t think of specific details, giving reasons why you think it is important for the council to set minimum expectations for what student accommodation should include and how it should be built will be really helpful in justifying the need for these policies.
Nottingham City Council has published this guidance in a draft ‘Supplementary Planning Document’ (SPD), which is supposed to give further details to developers on the council’s existing policies rather than introducing new ones. This means they can’t introduce any new ideas in this SPD, and everything must be evidenced. The SPD is currently open for a public consultation, so comments from students as the target audience will be useful in either justifying the guidance issued or in making the council reconsider how it could be improved.
Draft guidance from Nottingham City Council
Proportion of rooms
One of the key problems the council is trying to tackle with this guidance is the increasing proportion of student accommodation which is built as mostly or only studios; single occupancy rooms with all the cooking, toilet and living facilities in one ‘flat’. In Nottingham this currently makes up 24% of current accommodation, compared to the national average of 12%, and is currently projected to rise to as high as 37% of all beds in the city. The council is proposing that new developments would be limited to a maximum of 20% studio beds unless there is good reason for an exception.
The new guidance also suggests that at least 7.5% of rooms in any proposed new accommodation should be accessible (specifically designed to meet the needs of students with limited mobility).
Minimum room sizes
For a normal bedroom in a new shared or ‘cluster’ flat, the council is suggesting it should be at least 12.5m2, (if you can imagine the width of two single beds and the length of three with a bit of space at the end), with shared facilities for social interaction and cooking for the number of occupants but at least 5m2 per student, which is roughly the size of three, 2 seater sofas.
For studios, the suggested minimum size is at least 18m2 per room, which can be visualised as both the width and length of three double beds, although all of these can be any shape which meets this guidance.
Facilities
The proposed guidance does not currently contain any comment on what facilities (such as gyms, study spaces, common rooms etc.) should or shouldn’t be provided by new accommodation which is built, but does suggest that it should be designed to be considerate of various disabilities and how they can be accommodated for in communal spaces.
Nottingham City Council already has a policy that where there isn’t sufficient open space in a new design the developers should pay a one-off contribution towards other open space in the city, however, the developers can get out of this if they predict such a contribution would be too expensive for the project to make profit.
Sustainability and Waste
As with guidance for all new construction projects in Nottingham, this SPD states that new student accommodation should be designed with sustainability in mind from the outset, including in their construction.
New developments should also have adequate provision for waste and recycling storage and collection, considering how they can encourage recycling.
Transport
The council’s SPD refers to pre-existing policies regarding the location of new accommodation, namely that it should have accessible transport links and promote waling, cycling and public transport wherever possible, and suggests participating in schemes which promote active transport or offering discounted bus tickets. It also ads that developers should prevent students from keeping cars in Nottingham (and as such provide very limited to no parking).
Security and ‘Student Management’
According to the draft guidance, this last point should be included in the ‘Student Management Plan’ for the property, which should ‘minimise any potential negative impacts from the occupants’ and reduce ‘the risk of adverse impacts upon the wider residential amenity’.
It also includes a requirement that any new student accommodation with over 100 beds should have 24 staffing or security for both the safety of the occupants and to manage their behaviour.
Other uses
The council’s draft SPD also includes an openness to new ideas for schemes which are mixed use, i.e. both student accommodation and hotels, businesses or long-term housing, providing each user groups needs are maintained. With this in mind, developers are encouraged to think of how new accommodation schemes can also provide opportunities for wider community benefit.
As there can be periods where student accommodation is not needed out of term, the SPD includes guidance on how developers can plan for appropriate alternative uses for these periods without requiring additional permission, provided it does not harm the primary use as student accommodation.
The SPD also references other council policies which require developers to explain how the accommodation could be converted to alternative residential use if it was no longer required for students, although it reminds developers that additional planning permission would be required for a change in use.
The full version of Nottingham City Council’s Draft Supplementary Planning Document is available here:
https://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/media/dyedumjv/purpose-build-student-accommodation-spd.pdf