Capital is hooked on building more student battery farms

“WHAT? You’ve done another one?”

This was the response from my friend when I wrote yet another story about Cardiff’s borderline obsession with building “luxury” student flats. Obsession is 100% the right word. It is like the Welsh capital’s developers are on a Netflix binge. However, instead of losing four hours a day to Suits, Peaky Blinders and Friends, they are just relentlessly putting in applications for blocks of flats which, when you look at it, is just a form a battery farming for students.

In this (very strained) analogy, Cardiff council is the partner, parent or housemate who should have an intervention when the level of Netflix bingeing gets too much.

My housemate had a very frank discussion with me about six months ago when I watched the entire series of Ozarks in 48 hours.

Unfortunately, the council is not having an intervention. It is not turning the telly off. It is not cancelling the Netflix subscription.

Instead it is installing fibre broadband for better streaming, buying a bigger TV and setting the subscription to auto-renew every month.

Going back to my mate’s exasperation at “yet another student flats story”, there are two points that need to be raised.

Firstly, there are so many issues with these flats that it is incredibly easy to find new angles to the story.

Parking, loss of tax revenue, rubbish, wholesale changes to an area’s demographics, loss of local businesses, noise, potential change of use if student numbers fall, the fact developers can get round certain planning laws and the just plain odd location of some of the buildings are all issues that deserve attention.

Secondly, the result of all these issues will be borne by the people of Cardiff. With Brexit comes uncertainty and a fall (or even stagnation) in overseas student numbers could easily see these luxury flats becoming empty shells.

The next stage will be developers applying for a change of use. This has already happened with Cardiff’s tallest building, as it was unable to fill its rooms for the next academic year.

When the council was asked what would happen to buildings that couldn’t be filled, the answer was: “All cities experience changes in market conditions and wider economic factors as time progresses. These are often reflected in the way the use of buildings change over time.

“The planning system allows buildings to change in use through subsequent planning applications at a later date and student accommodation can be adapted to other uses.”

Let’s take the aforementioned largest building – the Bridge Street Exchange.

At almost 80m in height, the building has 477 rooms. If this is opened up to flats, it is likely that the rooms would be taken by young professionals.

First of all, it would need substantial internal changes as it is not set out in a way that would suit people who are not looking for the “student experience”.

Then you will have an issue with parking. If just half of these people have cars, that is several hundred more vehicles looking to park in the city centre with literally no provision for them.

The most frustrating thing about writing these stories is when people frame it as “student-bashing”.

Students are as interwoven into the fabric of modern Cardiff as the Castle, Roath Lake and the Bluebirds. The vibrancy and energy they bring is yet another reason why it is a truly wonderful city in which to live. In the past two weeks I have spoken to dozens of nonstudent residents of Cathays. They do not “hate students”. They chose to live in the area because of the vibe. In many cases, they are former alumni themselves. However, they do have legitimate concerns about these flats. Some are not due to complete until 2021 and student numbers are not going up. How many do we need?

In the interest of balance, it should be pointed out that Cardiff is in the grip of a housing crisis and it is possible the flats could free up housing stock in Cathays.

This is great in theory but it relies on the notion that students will be prepared to pay up to £1,000 a month instead of the £300 they can pay for a room in a Cathays terraced house.

The students who can afford this tend to be from overseas and they are not forecast to increase in number.

This is a debate that must be had and it needs to be framed as the legitimate concern that it is and not as just another case of student-bashing.