The combination of a “significant slowing” of residential house building and an influx of new student accommodation in a North London borough risks creating an “unbalanced community”, the local authority has warned.
Brent Council is proposing a pause on all new purpose built student accommodation (PBSA), particularly in Wembley, due to fears it will inhibit its plan to address local housing shortages and no longer provide a balanced and mixed community.
The development of new residential housing has drastically reduced over recent years in favour of PBSA, largely due to factors such as rising construction costs, availability of materials and building safety issues. If the current trend continues, the council estimates that, by 2028, students would account for more than a quarter of Wembley’s population.
The need for affordable and family-sized homes in the borough has become urgent in the last couple of years, according to the council. The number of people presenting as homeless to the local authority has risen by 23 per cent in the three years to August 2024 – up to around 140 households a week – and has continued to rise, with more than half of these now housed in temporary accommodation.
During this time, housing delivery has “slowed significantly”, with just 656 of the 2,325 required homes between 2023 and 2024 actually delivered – despite over 8,000 homes having planning permission. Instead, investor interest has increased in student accommodation, with PBSA also being pushed forward on many sites previously permitted for conventional housing development.
Brent has only one higher education campus in the borough – the University of Westminster at Northwick Park, which has 150 student bed spaces. However, over the past decade the provision of PBSA has grown significantly, with 6,257 units not completed, 1,617 under construction, and a further 1,559 either permitted or approved in principle.
There are applications for an additional 2,010 bed spaces that are yet to be determined and another 918 spaces in advanced stages. Most of these are within the Wembley area, however, other growth areas are now starting to be subject to greater interest, according to the council.
Increasing the availability of PBSA does provide tangible benefits, with the local authority pointing to it reducing the number of students occupying private rentals, its contribution towards housing delivery targets, and bringing more overseas students with high disposable income to the area – which it claims “can contribute significantly to local economies through their purchasing power”.
However, if all currently proposed PBSA schemes in Wembley - the world-famous home to the national stadium- were delivered, it would increase the number of student bed spaces from 6,058 to 9,558. This would mean that the population of students in the area would rise from 21.8 per cent to 26.8 per cent by 2028 – an amount the council would not consider to be “mixed and balanced”.
Therefore, the local authority has tabled a plan to pause additional PBSA schemes in Wembley – other than those already consented, submitted as applications, or in advanced pre-application discussions – with the possibility of seeking similar pauses in other areas should it be required. The proposal will be decided on at next week’s Cabinet meeting (October 13).
Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Property, Cllr Teo Benea, said: “The presence of higher education institutions in Brent is limited. However, the size of the sector in London, together with limited opportunities centrally to accommodate students, means Brent does and will play a role in housing students.
“Brent has provided a substantial number of PBSA bed-spaces in the last decade. Currently there is substantial interest in the sector, with activity elevated significantly when compared to conventional housing proposals. However, in Wembley if recent trends were to be continued for the next three years, there is the prospect of a potential imbalance in Brent priority housing needs being met and longer term an unbalanced and mixed community occurring.
“PBSA is a strong development sector, attracting inward investment. This can be important, particularly in the early stages of delivery of ambitious regeneration schemes, or subsequent in maintenance of their delivery rates, contributes to housing delivery targets and brings with it a population that increasingly has a higher representation of foreign students with significant spending power, supporting Brent’s economic base.”
