A longstanding controversial topic that has become more acute as higher education institutions expanded their student numbers faster than the accommodation they could provide for.
I’ve written about this before
- February 2025: ‘Cambridge needs to talk about student accommodation & universities’ expansion again‘
- August 2023: ‘The student housing crisis represents a collective public policy failure from successive governments’
As I wrote in 2023:
Most of you will be familiar with my repeated references to Parliamentary reports on unsustainable council finances (Commons LUHC 2021) and the overall broken system (Commons PACAC 2022) that means councils:
- Do not have the legal powers to restrict the growth of educational establishments, let alone place conditions on their growth such as providing the necessary accommodation for those students – with the ability to take legal action against such institutions in cases of non-compliance;
- Do not have the financial powers to ensure that their own local residential housing needs are met – ones that are essential for the proper functioning of towns and cities.“
Who gets to tell higher education institutions that their expansion plans risk reducing the quality of life of permanent residents in the towns and cities they share?
Anyone?
Cambridge is a unique case because successive governments have decided that the city is so important financially to the national economy that it cannot be left to local government to decide its future – hence the controversies on both the principle of, and type of development corporation ministers considered before seeking Parliament’s approval for a centrally-led (i.e. ministerial-controlled) development corporation rather than a mayoral one.
The study of student accommodation from 2017
The 2023 blogpost also highlighted the last in-depth study on student accommodation for Cambridge.
“The report estimates that some 6,000 rooms would have to be delivered in new Purpose-Built Student Accommodation if existing housing stock shared by students as to be returned to the open housing market“
Above – from the Assessment of Student Housing Demand and Supply for Cambridge City Council, CCHPR Jan 2017.
Question: Has anyone evaluated this figure?
Only 2027 would be quite a nice time to have a ten year update with further information on the number of homes designed for long term residents that have been acquired by property owners and converted into HMOs. How many homes in existing residential neighbourhoods are now effectively out of the long term housing market because they are now Air BnB properties (which should be reined back in for their original purpose to enable existing home owners to let out their properties for short periods of time, rather than acquiring residences and undermining the guesthouses and small hotels in the city).
The latest on student accommodation from the Draft Local Plan Documents
In big letters just incase you miss it. The document is titled:
Development Strategy topic paper – Appendix 13: Meeting the accommodation needs of students
…and you can find it in the documents’ list here – type [Ctrl+F] ‘Student’ and the page should jump to the highlighted document.
Additionally, the Development Strategy Topic Paper of December 2025 here, scrolling down to page 60 shows that:
“ARU have identified a need for 800 additional bedspaces by 2025/26 to
maintain 42% of its students living in purpose built student accommodation.”
Anglia Ruskin University to increase student numbers by 19% by 2045
That’s the latest figure they gave to the GCSP in Development Strategy topic paper – Appendix 13,
- “student numbers at ARU are anticipated to increase by 19% during the plan
period, from 12,745 students in 2024/25 to 15,165 students in 2044/45,
based on annual predications up to 2029/30 before then transitioning to a 5
year assumption up to 2044/45, - “assuming the same proportion of students live in Cambridge (i.e. 70%) that
this would mean 10,616 ARU students living in Cambridge by 2044/45, an
uplift of 1,695 students compared to 2024/25, and - “the latest Development Framework for ARU shows the potential to deliver
approximately 388 bedrooms at Severn Place and Mackays“
Above – DSTP Appendix 13 (2026) p7
Furthermore, the document linked above states:
“based on revised projections of student growth (medium growth scenario)
and 70% of students living within a 5 km radius of the campus, the identified
need [for ARU] is 1,695 student bedrooms by 2045″
Somehow the councils managed to whittle that need down “to 387 units for 2024/25 to 2032/33, from the previously identified need of 800 units.” but my brain is too fried to get my head around how they did this.
Note I have had issues with Anglia Ruskin University’s growth forecasts in the past – this from October 2025.
“Why are there no figures for the private colleges and language schools?”
I highlighted this data gap in February 2025. The problem is that very few of the institutions responded.
“In 2023, very few responses were received from non-university institutions and no
specific needs were identified for additional student accommodation, other than in
relation to additional rooms for short-stay English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
students.”
“The Councils have therefore continued to assume that there is no identified student
accommodation need from the non-university institutions.”
Above – DSTP Appendix 13 (2026) p9
The Greater Cambridge Shared Partnership should go back to the private colleges and language schools that did not respond and get them to confirm in writing that they will not be expanding their student numbers over the next local planning period
It might help concentrate the minds of those working in this lucrative sector – one that should be contributing far more to the lives of children and young people who live in Cambridge as I wrote in this piece.
At present the children and young people who come to Cambridge from abroad get to meet people from all over the world – except from the UK. Which inevitably means that local children and young people are effectively locked out from the experiences friendships that people make that can last a lifetime. Hence in the linked blogpost above I asked what expanding the Cambridge BID scheme to cover private education and language learning institutions might be like, one where the funds raised would pay for shared activities made available for free to local children who might otherwise not get the chance to take part.
It may be that a future devolution policy will enable local councils or combined/strategic authorities to impose such a levy anyway without the need for a convoluted and complicated BID process. Just administer it in the way that Edinburgh is currently doing with its tourism tax, which sooner or later will be coming to England anyway.
Anyway, have a look at the sections on student accommodation. It’s slightly more complex than the numbers, but I remain concerned that limits to growth don’t seem to apply to higher education institutions. And when it comes to such institutions acting in a manner that is detrimental to the permanent residents of Cambridge, the University has got form. Over 700 years of it as Rowland Parker explains in his book.
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