Newcastle Richardson Road student flats set to be demolished by Newcastle University
Planning bosses are set to green light proposals to demolish an iconic block of student flats.
Councillors are recommended to approve Newcastle University’s application to demolish the flats in Richmond Road and replace them with state-of-the-art accommodation at a committee meeting today .
Richardson Road, affectionately known as Ricky Road, has been synonymous with students for more than four decades and is the university’s largest self-catered site.
The multi-million pound plan to tear down the current student accommodation and replace it with six 10-storey blocks totalling almost 1,300 flats has been given the thumbs up by council officers.
An officer report to Newcastle City Council said: Taken as a whole, the development would allow for the replacement of out dated student blocks with the benefit of additional university sports and education provision on the site.
These benefits are considered to, on balance, outweigh impacts upon visual and residential amenity.
In all, 99 separate documents have been given to planners to peruse before making their decision, they include details of tree removal plans, sub station layouts, results of bat surveys and travel plans.
If the development is approved by councillors work is scheduled to begin knocking down the current 1970s buildings in June 2016 and will be completed in two stages, completing the project in 2019….