Regional UK Cities See Boom In PBSA With Record Residential Highs
Residential and purpose-built student accommodation developments led construction activity across four of the UK’s regional cities, with over 29,000 city centre homes under construction or completed in 2023, according to the Deloitte Regional Crane Survey.
The consultancy’s latest update found nearly 8,200 student bedrooms were under construction in Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester last year, up 40% on 2022. The residential sector led the way in all four surveyed cities with 87 schemes under construction in 2023 and 28 breaking ground.
The most dramatic increase was in Birmingham, where the number of bed spaces being built increased from around 100 in 2022 to more than 1,500 in 2023.
Manchester recorded the highest volume of student residential starts in the survey’s 24-year history, with construction underway on three schemes totalling 2,153 new beds.
“The challenge for other cities will be to deliver affordable student products, as well as the provision of amenities and social infrastructure to not only attract but retain the talent in its region,” Deloitte Senior Planner Jennifer Chatfield said in a statement.
The development of student accommodation hit record highs for the second year running in Leeds, with 3,704 bed spaces under construction across 10 schemes. The wider residential sector remained strong with 15 schemes under construction, almost half of which started in 2023, set to deliver 3,714 homes.
Belfast saw a tenfold increase in activity over the past year, with 20 schemes and 950 homes underway, while housing output in Birmingham city centre increased by 36% with the development of three student residential schemes, one hotel, one healthcare and one educational facility.
“It is the cumulative delivery across all sectors over the last six years that tells a remarkable story of the renaissance in regional city centres,” Deloitte Real Assets Advisory partner John Cooper said. “The four cities we monitor have seen the collective delivery of over 55,000 residential and student homes, over 6,700 hotels rooms, circa 11M SF of office space, and over 4M SF of educational facilities. This is genuinely transformative.”
Manchester University has a £400M plan to build 3,000 new student homes at its campus in Manchester suburb Fallowfield and 1,700 beds in Upper Brook Street, along with two life sciences buildings.
In contrast, the office sector has not experienced the same boom, with the 3.4M SF of commercial space recorded in the four cities in 2023 on par with recent years despite Leeds achieving an all-time high of nearly 700K SF of completions across three schemes, the highest volume reported in the survey.
Manchester reported the largest share of space under construction at 2.2M SF and saw the amount of refurbished office space, accounting for 53%, overtake new-build schemes for the first time.
