‘WHEN IS THIS
Residents want answers as number of student blocks continues to grow
I MAGINE living in the same residential street in Cardiff for decades.
You understand that by living in Cathays, a central student area, there will be noise, it will be difficult to park, and it will be messy.
You have accepted this as part and parcel of living in a vibrant and growing capital city.
This is the case for the residents of Maindy Road in Cardiff. The street is tidy, with trees along both sides and small gardens in front of well-kept terraced houses. Despite being a student heartland the area has a good balance of students, young families, professionals and older long-term residents.
At the end of the street, there are three commercial units containing a gym (a recent tenant), a windows supplier and a car garage that has been there for 40 years.
To the horror of the people living on the street, Cardiff council has just granted permission for the owner of these units to demolish them all and build a six-storey building comprising 143 student flats.
Does this sound familiar? It should. The Welsh capital is currently in the eye of a student flat-building storm.
There are a huge number of major developments either open, under construction or being considered for permission across the city with 13 of these within about 250 metres of each other around the Newport Road/City Road junction. In total, this adds up to more than 6,000 beds in Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) or, as the marketing teams refer to it – “luxury accommodation”.
Following the application back in December, dozens of residents have objected to the application.
“This is not student bashing,” said Lynn Glaister, 56, who has lived on the street for almost three decades.
“I chose to live in a student area. I have lived here since 1990 and know what kind of area it is. I like the vibrancy and I do like the students, but I do not like the landlords.”
And this comes to the heart of the matter that those objecting to all of these developments bring up. They are not anti-student, they simply think that a six-storey building on a residential street is going to change the area beyond recognition in terms of traffic, noise, mess and aesthetic.
“When is this going to end?” said environmental officer Georgina Taubman, who recently moved to the street.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against students, they come to the city, they spend their money and help the local economy.
“However, the developers’ need to accommodate them in newly-built complexes is causing an irreversible impact on the residential streets of Cardiff and I just can’t understand why the council keep enabling these developments to happen.
“Some are being built in newlydeveloped areas, such as that in front of Central Station – these I can live with as it’s just another high-rise building to add to the list in that area.
“However, when these developments start to affect normal residential streets I believe this is unreasonable. However, the council doesn’t seem to care how they are affecting the residents of Cardiff.
“I realise this seems a bit ‘NIMBY’ (not in my back yard) but my street is just one illustrative example of how student accommodation is taking over.
“In the case of Maindy Road, where are these students going to park (no parking is designed in to the development)? What about the noise and increased footfall down the street? It just feels like they are taking over.
“We already have the huge Liberty Living at Cambrian Point complex backed on the street which extends along the majority of the street – it feels like Maindy Road is being suffocated with student accommodation.
“I can only feel for the poor residents who will be living in the shadow of the building as well as the three established companies who will be evicted against their will as a result of the land owner selling their land to make way for this development.”
Those local businesses are going to have to relocate.
“Parking is going to be horrific,” said Jason Lewis, 51, who runs the garage with his son.
“I think there is going to be 140 rooms and they are not putting in any parking spaces.
“There will be the noise from the taxis as well. That is already an issue with the student flats behind.
“There has been a garage here for 40 years but it has been called Autocraft for 20 years.
“There are 25 people working on the site but it doesn’t matter to the planning committee, they are not interested.
“Everybody around here is talking about it.
“It is a really nice road. It is one of the few roads that hasn’t been taken over by students in Cathays.”
So why are so many of these PBSAs springing up?
It used to be that a landlord would buy a two/three bedroom terraced house in Cathays, add a dividing wall to the living room and rent it as a five/six bed at £300 a month per room.
These flats are essentially the battery farming version of old school student accommodation.
A terraced street where a landlord owns five to 10 properties will all have different wiring and each have a different boiler.
This accommodation-by-numbers model enables investors who have large amounts of cash behind them to take advantage of their economies of scale – one type standard wiring.
Because student housing is not classified as either residential housing (C3) or housing in multiple occupation (C4) but is treated as “sui generis” – of its own type – councils have more freedom to negotiate specific planning policies to control them or impose standards.
It means that standards for light, space and building standards are often lower. And there is no requirement to fund affordable housing elsewhere.
The city centre developments that are going to dominate the Cardiff skyline in the coming decade have the advantage that they do not have many long-term residents bordering them. However, the Maindy Road development is slightly further out and can have a real impact on an area.
Dr Peter Mackie is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University.
He said there is a body of evidence that the “studentification” of an area can affect locals.
“My starting point would be that it is area specific,” he said.
“Studentification does have an impact and we know that from a lot of different research.
“Students live their lives differently to the families and residents that already live in an area.
“That can be in terms of the amount of rubbish or the levels of noise. We know that these things do happen.
“It can also have an impact on the of boiler and