Year: 2012

Caunton are making great inroads into the residential sector – one where steel is winning an ever increasing market share. Two major student accommodation projects are to be constructed using Caunton structural steelwork. One in London and one in Birmingham.

Erection of Number Six Paris Garden, just south of the Thames in Southwark, is well under way. These 9 and 13 storey blocks require nearly 600te of steelwork on a very tight inner city site, and the main contractor is McLaren. The building will house a ballet school as well as 162 student residences. The second project at Victoria Halls Selly Oak comprises three blocks of student accommodation – eight storey, six storey and five storey. The steelwork totals over 600tonnes. Here the main contractor is Clegg Construction …

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Annual growth in student rents has slowed following the 7% drop in university admissions and the rise in tuition fees.

But private sector landlords offer better value to students than halls of residence. While the cost of a student flatshare room has gone up 3.9% in the last year, halls of residence costs have risen 5.5%. A student in a hall of residence now pays an average of nearly £1,200 more a year.

Research carried out by the website EasyRoommate shows the average cost of renting a room in a student flatshare across the major British university towns has grown 3% from £332 per month to £345. In contrast, average rents in non-student flatshares have grown 7.6% over the same period from £409 to £440 per month …

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Plans to turn a former drug rehabilitation centre into student accommodation have been given the green light.

Councillors on Preston Council’s planning committee yesterday approved proposals to extend Appleby House on Appleby Street into a four storey student accommodation block.

The site, which used to be used by the Preston Community Drug Team, is between an existing eight storey student accommodation complex and a three storey 1960s residential block to the north …

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GB Building Solutions has been contracted by Manchester Metropolitan University to design and build a new £28m student accommodation scheme on its new Birley Fields campus in Hulme.

Work is due to start on site in January 2013. This will be GB’s fourth university scheme in the past two years, all to BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ category.

One of GB’s other schemes, The Green in Bradford, was proclaimed the highest BREEAM rated building in the world on its completion in August 2011 …

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Barclays today sold its 60% share of the UK’s second-largest student-housing operator to a Dutch pension fund manager in a deal valued at £840 million.

Although PGGM of the Netherlands did not disclose what it paid for the stake in UPP, it did say the company is worth £1.4 billion. UPP manages dormitories for 11 UK universities, housing about 22,000 students and generating annual rental income of £104 million. The company plans to invest £1 billion in the next two years to build and renovate college facilities, which would increase its yearly rental revenue to £133 million, according to the statement …

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Cardiff Council gave developers the go-ahead to build 477 new student bedrooms this afternoon, with the city’s planning committee approving two major developments within half a mile of one another.

Councillors gave the green light to a block of 279 bedrooms on land at Oxford Street in Roath, with construction firm LG Urban Developments saying the “upmarket” scheme would be tailored to international and postgraduate students.

Just half an hour later, the committee also approved the refurbishment of Shand House on Newport Road – formerly the Cardiff Institute for the Blind – which will be turned into 198 student flats and three ground floor retail units …

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Despite tuition fees and other financial problems facing school-leavers, student numbers are growing. And as they (and their parents) know, accommodation is extremely expensive.

This has sparked a rush of money into the sector, along with the usual salesmen and marketing patter promising big returns. If you haven’t yet had a flyer or email urging you to invest between £35,000 and £60,000 in a student bedsit, and boasting profits of anything up to 12 per cent a year, you can expect to receive one soon. A lot of this should be taken with a pinch of salt, but student accommodation is regarded by professional investors as a serious and lucrative asset class. Wealthy individuals increasingly own student flats as part of their portfolio, as do big institutions, including insurers Aviva and Legal & General …

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The planned student accommodation would provide an additional 708 en-suite bedrooms to the existingaccommodation on campus, divided into 75 flats across two buildings.

The proposals were developed in consultation with students and staff with a prototype bedroom built on campus. The bedrooms will provide a welcoming environment, space to study, en-suite facilities and infrastructure for the latest technology, each flat would have a modern kitchen and dining area with floor to ceiling windows that overlook the courtyards to the north and south, pairs of flats will share a communal lounge to encourage social interaction across different flats, the lounges are planned to be equipped with wall mounted TVs and moveable seating to enable students to use this space as they see fit …

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Two Victorian Villas in a Cardiff conservation zone will not be demolished and replaced with student accommodation, after the city’s planning committee threw out the plans.

The Charnwood Group had applied to the local authority for planning permission and conservation area consent to knock down the buildings at 23 and 24 Park Place, and replace them with a six-storey block of 79 student flats and ground-floor retail unit.

But the proposals were within the Cathays Park Conservation Area, prompting planning officers to recommend that the plans be refused, as well as objections from local ward members in Cathays, Cardiff Civic Society, and the Central Area Conservation Group …

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An uphill Lincoln office building, Crosstrend House on Newport, will be converted into student accommodation after it has been sold to a city-based property development company.

The building, which used to house the Crown Prosecution Service, has been converted into student accommodation and will be leased to Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln.

“Crosstrend House will be an excellent addition to our estate, increasing the number of rooms we can offer our students from around 200 to around 270,” said Stephen Deville, director of resources at BG …

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