Bristol: Student flats to be built on car workshop site

Car dealership Paramount Cars, founded in 1976, would be demolished

Plans for student flats have been approved despite their distance from university buildings.

Developers have been given planning permission to build a 49-bed block of student flats in Bedminster, Bristol.

The three-storey building would be located more than a 30-minute walk from the closest university campuses.

However, planning officers at Bristol City Council said several bus stops are nearby, and students "could rely on the bus".

The student flats would be built from numbers 155 to 165 on West Street, by Paragon Developments.

Car dealership Paramount Cars, which was founded in 1976, would be demolished.

The dealership's owner recently retired and sold the site to the developers, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The council committee was split on whether new student flats should be built in this part of Bedminster, with some calling for developers to build more family homes instead, and others said it was good to "disperse student accommodation across the city".

Councillor Tom Hathway said: "There's clearly a problem with endless university expansion and it tickles me when developers come to us and say 'we're building student accommodation to help with the housing crisis'.

"The housing crisis we've got is that there aren't enough family and affordable homes."

However, Councillor Ed Plowden said: "There's clear evidence that a lack of student accommodation can affect housing availability across the city, so this is therefore justified.

"It's good that we're not having an over-concentration of student accommodation in certain areas, and dispersing it across the city is quite a good thing."

Chair of the committee Councillor Richard Eddy previously said he was sceptical about student accommodation expanding this far out, but had now been "more mollified" by extra information from the developers and planning officers.