Exeter City Council has dismissed concerns that too much student accommodation is having an adverse impact on community balance in approving plans for a new purpose-built block on the site of the former King Billy public house in Longbrook Street.
Earlier this month it approved the development plans, which prompted significant criticism from local councillors and community representatives, following the failure of several other schemes for the site over a period of seven years, all of which it also approved.
In doing so it refused to accept university-published figures showing a decline in Exeter student numbers and denied that major challenges facing the UK higher education sector as a result of falling overseas student demand might affect the university’s financial prospects.
It also understated the number of dedicated student beds that are already available in Exeter, as well as those in the development pipeline, and cited its recent and as-yet-untested inclusion of student accommodation in its housing delivery figures – which makes student blocks more likely to gain planning consent – as a justification for approval.
Instead of using existing local planning policy definitions to assess the impact of the scheme on community balance, it contrived criteria which restricted consideration to a 250 metre radius round the development site and relied on planning use classes which do not consider student accommodation as a distinct use of its own.
It also counted student blocks – which in Exeter house between five and 1,257 students – instead of the number of beds they contain to assess the impact of student accommodation on communities – which consist of people and not property – to conclude that the King Billy block would not have an adverse impact on community balance or the character of the area.
Exeter Observer analysis of the planning policy-defined city centre area found 4,684 dedicated student accommodation beds in July with another 648 in the pipeline – equating to 46% of the city centre population.
The 862 “co-living” units that are also due would make it 54%, without including the uncountable city centre flats and houses in which students live but which are not designated as student housing.
