ABC SOS: The Glasgow planning row and the rise of student accommodation

Girders reach into the air where the ABC once stood. 

It has been almost 10 years since the concert venue and nightclub last hummed with life. Badly damaged in the second Glasgow School of Art (GSA) fire, it was partially brought down after officials deemed the frontage unsafe. 

Protected now by graffiti-bearing boards, it is the subject of a long and fraught planning application. The local planning committee approved a bid to turn the site into a 365-bed student housing development last summer, only for the decision to be referred to the Scottish Government amidst fierce debate.

As many as 130 objections were made to the plan, with critics arguing that the nine-storey build, which would include a foodhall and events space, would obscure views of the art school’s world-renowned Charles Rennie Mackintosh building – if and when that is ever restored. Supporters said it would revitalise the area.

A report to the Scottish Government, already delayed, which was expected in “late May/early June” is now overdue again, with no sign on when it might be filed. The Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA) has confirmed to Holyrood that it doesn’t have it, but nothing else. “The DPEA is dealing with a high volume of casework, and an update will be published on the website when it is available,” a spokesperson said.

The saga is playing out against an increasingly politicised debate about housing. The conversation is not just about bald supply, but – wrapped up in issues of identity, wealth and social tensions – questions over what goes where, who gets what and how much it all costs. 

studentification

While the loudest clashes are heard over entitlement to and availability of social housing, purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) creates plenty of noise of its own.

Though some of it is the product of universities themselves, much is created by private enterprise, and while access to communal facilities like gyms and living spaces is often offered and power bills included in rents, the private spaces can be cramped – so cramped, in fact, that they’re frequently compared with cells in Scandinavian jails, which offer more home comforts than our own prisons.

“The original argument in favour of PBSA was to try and depoliticise the studentification of tenemented neighborhoods,” says Professor Ken Gibb, director of the UK Collaborative Centre on Housing Excellence (Cache), which is led by the University of Glasgow. “What it’s done is create a different kind of studentification. 

“It’s the classic planning problem – the need to balance different interests. The interests of communities should loom large but there’s also the business opportunities student housing creates.”

According to a 2024 report by Cache, there is a shortage of student housing across the country, caused in part by a rise in student numbers and in part by an imbalance between supply and demand. 

The report found 8,129 PBSA places in Aberdeen in 2022-23 against a renting student population of 11,325. Dundee had 3,289 PBSA bedspaces to 14,060 students seeking accommodation that year.

In Edinburgh, there was a shortfall of 13,852 bedspaces – more than double Glasgow’s figure of 6,093.

And though PBSA developments can help to ease the pressure on housing stocks, the high cost for many students has led to complaints about the model – while in some areas resident communities have been vocally opposed to new PBSA they feel is either wrong for the site, or the wrong type of housing altogether, with affordable social lets deemed to be running too low.

And against a fall in international student numbers now driving higher education cuts, there’s a question of whether these units are really needed in the long term, and how else they could be used.

“We’re in a bit of a crisis with international student recruitment,” says Gibb. “They make up a huge proportion of the market for existing PBSA, let alone additional units. At the heart of this is the business model which is based on quite significant rents.

“Every week there’s a PBSA development making its way through planning, or a proposal made, or something that’s broken ground” in Edinburgh and Glasgow, he goes on, and while planners “seem to be supporting them, they must be aware of what the universities are telling them about the problem they are facing with numbers”.

Nationally, a total of 6,832 affordable homes were built in the last year. The figure is 15 per cent below target and despite early signs of recovery, with starts at the highest level since 2021-22, completions have fallen to their lowest level in the same timeframe. 

The PBSA planned for the ABC site is, like many, the brainchild of private enterprise. Developer Vita Group already has a facility in the west end of the city, and this project would not only take in the site of ABC, but also its shuttered nightclub neighbour, Jumpin Jaks.  

there is no community benefit at all from placing a rabbit hutch of student accommodation there

ABC owner Obarcs and property investment firm Urban Pulse have praised the “viable, respectful development plan”, which would include an open courtyard providing views of the Mack.

But Historic Environment Scotland argued the build would have an adverse impact on views of a renewed Mack building, with GSA director Penny Macbeth saying the high-rise would “fundamentally compromise” the Mack.

At a planning hearing in January, Glasgow MSP Paul Sweeney said the development would amount to a “diminution of the cityscape” and compared it to the Tower of London, saying that despite a proliferation of skyscrapers there, planners in that city had “maintained a respectful distance” from the historic building. “We shouldn’t be so commercially driven about maximising scale,” he said, and one report from 2019 pointed to the potential for rehabilitation of the ABC’s shell, for entertainment or other purposes. “Other solutions to this site can be achieved,” said Sweeney.

Garnethill Community Council has expressed its “profound disappointment” at the local councillors who approved the bid last year, noting that none of them represent the ward. Rev Jay Sutherland, vice-chair of the group, thinks the proposal is an “absolute outrage”.

The “abandonment” of the site is “deeply depressing”, she says. But when asked if she has sympathy with the argument that there is a business case for the development and a need for more PBSA, she answers: “Absolutely not.”

“We are surrounded by student housing, storeys and storeys and storeys of it in and right around Garnethill,” she says. “There’s no shortage of it; this is short-term housing and generally there is no community benefit at all from placing a rabbit hutch of student accommodation there.

“We are supportive of the right development,” she goes on. “This is a conservation area; we have beautiful buildings which were scheduled for demolition and the community fought to preserve them. If there’s any justice in the world then this will be knocked back.”

It’s hardly the only case with polarised opinions. An application to replace the former Scottish War Blinded building – the last remaining building of the former Royal Blind Asylum and School – in Edinburgh’s Bruntsfield with a 124-bed PBSA was greenlit by the Scottish Government late last month in a decision that overturned a council refusal.

More than 230 objections were sent in about what has been described as an “overbearing” development, and while the local authority ruled that the scale, style, density and position of the new build would harm the character of the conservation area in which the site sits, the Scottish Government’s reporter said it was in line with the local plan and there were no relevant grounds for refusal.

Karim Hurtig of NUS Scotland is well aware of the controversy surrounding some PBSA. The University of Aberdeen graduate stayed in one himself after moving from Finland, then switched to a shared flat for the remainder of his studies. 

PBSA, he says, can provide a good living experience for students locating to new places, but are “really expensive” to the point of being “unaffordable” for many. “You end up not having a lot to live on,” he says. “The good ones are hard to find – the good ones that are affordable are almost impossible,” he tells Holyrood. 

Common areas provide a chance to “build a community”, he says, but students in small single units can still become “isolated” and feel “cooped-up”. And as with Sutherland, he would prefer to see more affordable homes built, rather than PBSA. “The whole ‘students versus the public’ debate is forced into the conversation because PBSAs want to keep developing. It’s not a question of whether we need PBSA or public housing, we just need affordable housing for everyone.”

Demand is changing

According to Cache, there is “insufficient data on student demographics and their housing needs”, with a “lack of coordination between universities, local authorities and other providers”. Data on trends for this market is “incomplete”, it found, “especially regarding landlord behaviour, vacancy rates and the impact of regulatory changes”. Then there’s “uncertainty in projecting student numbers, especially due to the volatile international student market” – all of which “creates challenges” for planning what’s actually needed.

“Demand is changing and that’s an important thing to think about,” says Gibb, with an expectation that domestic students will have lower income and resource levels than recent cohorts were able to draw on. In turn, that may weaken demand for PBSA, and so considerations should be made about a ‘plan b’ for the developments – some of which have themselves been repurposed from office blocks or similar.

These are “idiosyncratic” facilities, Gibb says, and may be expensive to revamp. But he points to City of Edinburgh Council’s decision to convert student blocks into temporary accommodation to tackle its chronic homelessness problem. 

A 67-room block on Gorgie Road was purchased for that purpose last year, followed by a 100-flat facility on Lasswade Road on the outskirts of the capital. A change of use for another in Leith has been sought, with a decision expected in August.

In a Scottish Parliament debate last summer, Leith MSP Ben Macpherson was amongst those to critique the proliferation of PBSA, saying the developments “are increasingly unwelcome in communities” such as his. “In my constituency and in Edinburgh as a whole, there is increasing concern about the amount of purpose-built student accommodation that is being built in our capital city, especially when there is an acute housing emergency. In many instances, PBSA extracts money out of Scotland, sometimes into tax havens, and uses up valuable urban land where normal housing should be built instead,” he said, calling for restrictions on future projects. 

In Glasgow, local decision-makers have already blocked out areas where further PBSA will not be allowed, such as parts of Partick in the west end and Cowcaddens near the city centre.

Centrality is part of the draw of PBSA, Gibb points out, though “experiments” to increase dispersal are under way, such as the reuse of a former care home in Govan for post-graduate students. 

What would help, Gibb suggests, is better collaboration between neighbouring universities to improve planning on what is actually needed now and in the future. More clarity from the Scottish Government would also bring improvement, he says. “There are real questions,” he says. “Strategically, what is all this trying to achieve for a city? What does the government want to achieve?”

Property investment firm Urban Pulse has said the ABC development plan is “viable” and “respectful”. Council planners said the current state of the site has had a “negative impact” not only on the immediate vicinity, but on the “viability and vitality of the city centre as a whole”.

Sutherland remains convinced that “a better plan” for the site is “entirely possible” – something “educational or cultural” which would benefit the “urban village” community of Garnethill.

The site has had many lives already: a skating rink, a cinema, a circus, a dance hall. A green light now would help it become a “landmark destination” again, according to James Rooke of developers Vita Group. “Our aim has always been to regenerate this anchor site by bringing forward exciting plans which celebrate the city’s best independent food and minds,” he said. 

“The beautifully designed destination food hall will breathe new life into this iconic location, creating a place for the people of Glasgow to come and enjoy together whilst revitalising Sauchiehall Street. 

“Meanwhile, the student accommodation above will play a pivotal role in reducing the number of students finding their way into Glasgow’s private rented accommodation in their second and third years.”