5. Summary and Conclusions

5.1. There is an identified need for additional Purpose Built Student Accommodation in Manchester and the purpose of this report has therefore been to assess the strength and defensibility of Manchester's PBSA pipeline of sites. This will form an important part of Manchester's evidence base to support a review of their Local Plan and in particular the continuing appropriateness of Policy H12, which seeks direct PBSA to appropriate sites within the Oxford Road Corridor, in close proximity to the Universities, and on the basis that a range of criteria can be satisfied.

5.2. The report will also provide information to MCC that can be considered in relation to their approach to forthcoming planning applications for PBSA, particularly those opportunistic applications that fall outside of the Oxford Road Corridor area, on sites that have not traditionally been considered suitable for PBSA. This matter has come into sharper focus following recent the recent Deansgate South appeal decision.

5.3. The straightforward questions which this report seeks to answer is whether there is sufficient opportunity within the Oxford Road Corridor and University Campuses to meet identified need for the next 5 years (and beyond up to 2030). Should it be demonstrated that there is sufficient opportunity, then it follows that there would be no obvious need for MCC to significantly depart from Policy H12 which has largely been effective over the last plan period in managing the supply of PBSA, albeit the application of that policy may vary in order to accelerate appropriate development proposals (in line with the conclusions of this report).

5.4. The analysis within this report has largely been produced on the basis of desk based appraisals, site visits and discussions with both Manchester City Council officer and representatives from University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. Full pro formas for the selected assessment sites are provided at Appendix A of this report.

5.5. It is identified in the introduction to this report that levels of need for PBSA bedspaces have been identified as being in the order of 760 student beds / annum for the period to 2030. In addition, Manchester City Council's projections estimate that the true figure will likely fall between 544 bedspaces and 1132. On this basis, it is estimated for the period of 2023 to 2030 inclusive (8 years), in the order of 4,244 to 9,132 PBSA bedspaces could be required.

5.6. From the analysis in tables 5.1 and 5.2 below (which should be cross referenced back to the detailed analysis in table 4.1), the following conclusions can be drawn:

• There are more than sufficient sites within the PBSA pipeline to cover identified levels of demand and our study indicates that there is significant appetite from PBSA operators, development and the Universities to bring forward PBSA in the city.
• The LPA should continue to apply the same level of rigour and consistent application over the application of Policy H12, as they have done in recent years.
• Currently, a relatively small number of sites are either under construction or with planning permission. As such, there is a considerable amount of work is to be done, if those sites are to come to fruition, and be capable of forming a truly defendable part of Manchester's PBSA pipeline.
• In addition, the majority of PBSA bedspaces will only come on stream for the 2025/26 academic year at the earliest. This means that there may well need to be short term strategies put in place to cover demand in the short term. This is being driven by a range of factors identified in section 2 of this report. These include: ‘unplanned growth;’ changes in the private rental market; and demographic factors – i.e., there is a forecast spike in the domestic university age population in the coming years which may result in additional demand for places in Manchester’s higher education institutions.