Plans Flats to house 830 students could get the green light today
APLAN for three huge accommodation blocks for more than 830 students in the middle of Bedminster could be approved by Bristol City Council today.
Planning officers have recommended the development, which is the biggest single site of the ‘Bedminster Green’ regeneration project, should be given approval by councillors.
The city council’s planning committee will meet today to decide on the application, which will see a large car park and some industrial units off Dalby Avenue and Malago Road, in the heart of Bedminster, developed into three large accommodation blocks.
The project will construct a total of 83 ‘cluster units,’ each with 10 rooms for students sharing communal and kitchen space.
The plans were unveiled earlier this year by the Post, showing artist’s impressions of the development, as seen from different places around Bedminster.
The biggest impact on the view will be from Bedminster Station, Windmill Hill and the northern part of Victoria Park, with buildings up to nine-storeys high being erected in the foreground of views across the city.
From the end of East Street and the junction with Dalby Avenue, the buildings will ‘step back’ from the road opposite the back of Iceland’s car park.
The plans are the fourth of the five ‘Bedminster Green’ sites to go before planners.
Two have already been given planning permission – at St Catherine’s Place and nearby Little Paradise on the East Street side of Malago Road.
A third, on the former Pring site between Malago Road and the railway line, has been turned down twice by planners and appeals have been rejected.
A fifth site, on land around the green of ‘Bedminster Green,’ is currently in the early stages of the planning process, but local businesses are already objecting to being evicted to make way for that part of the regeneration project.
In a report to councillors ahead of today’s planning committee, council planning officers acknowledged there are some downsides to the buildings, in terms of the size and scale of them, and the impact locally.
But the benefits in terms of the economic boost to the local area, bringing a largely disused area of Bedminster back to life, and the reopening and restoration of the Malago River through the site, outweighed the cons.
“In the assessment of this application, balancing the benefits and disbenefits detailed in the previous section of this report, officers consider that the adverse impacts of granting planning permission would not significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in the Development Plan and NPPF taken as a whole,” said the council report.
“This means that the application would constitute sustainable development, and this is a material consideration in favour of the proposed development. In the assessment above it is considered sufficient to outweigh the conflicts identified with the Development Plan,” it added.
The report detailed how some of the local bodies most directly impacted by the development plan had remained neutral in their comments.
Both Windmill Hill City Farm, which is next door to the site, and the Bedminster Bid group of local businesses, who have ambitious £10 million plans to rejuvenate nearby East Street, said that while they wanted to see development of a largely empty car park, they were concerned at the scale and size of the proposals.
The local residents’ campaign group, WHaM (Windmill Hill and Malago planning group) objected to the proposals, pointing out that the planning inspector who turned down one of the other Bedminster Green appeals (at the Malago Road site) earlier this year, did so because of the size and scale of the buildings proposed.
WHaM objected, saying the buildings at Dalby Avenue would be even bigger, and should be refused.
Council planners were due to meet to discuss the proposal this afternoon.