Planners pull the plug on city’s student housing

All student housing is on hold in Leicester as councillors draw up a battle plan to take back the city from developers. Leicester City Council pulled the plug on all proposals in the planning pipeline in November - and has just launched six weeks of consultation inviting the views of residents. Draft planning guidelines are available [Link: www.leicester.gov.uk/studenthousingspd ] online from the council web site. The proposals cover planning rules for new developments and a proposal to restrict switching family homes to small houses in multiple occupation, mainly let as shared houses to groups of three to five students in the city. Leicester city mayor Peter Soulsby said: "In September, as part of my 100-Day pledges, we held a student housing summit involving residents' groups, developers, private landlords, the city's two universities and the city council. “At the summit, it was agreed that further guidance was required to support our existing planning policies on new student housing. "This document will help the council to ensure that any proposals for new student housing meet a genuine need, are appropriate in size and scale, and are directed towards suitable locations within the city. "I would therefore encourage anyone who has an interest in student housing in the city to have a look at the draft document and let us know your views on what we are proposing." It is expected that the planning guidelines will be adopted in May. Until then, no new student housing can go ahead. The consultation follows years of complaints about student housing from residents, but the last straw is believed to be a 22-storey tower block under construction in the city that may have been blocked under the proposed guidelines. "That would be the sort of block that would be subject to the sort of scrutiny that would be necessary as a result of the policies that we are now suggesting, and I think it's very likely that wouldn't be found to be acceptable," said the mayor.

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Siobhan Smith

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