Exclusive:Developer prepared to leave huge tower block half built as row with Sheffield Council set to go to appeal
Half-built tower block set to go to appeal as row continues
A developer says Sheffield will be left with a half built tower block if his company loses an appeal in an on-going row with Sheffield Council.
Work is already well underway on the 26-storey Code Living flats building, with a central core built. But a disagreement over the project now looks to go to an appeal hearing later this year, as the developer and Sheffield Council continue to disagree over the type of flats that should fill the building.
Jamie Lewis, managing director of Code Student Accommodation, has seen a second planning application rejected as he bids to change the types of flats inside the huge tower block which is springing up on the corner of Wellington Street, Trafalgar Street and Rockingham Street, near the new Pounds Park.
Now he is warning that the scheme will go to a formal appeal, costing tax payers hundreds of thousands of pounds, because the banks will not agree to fund the scheme if it is built using the housing mix that Sheffield Council wants to see.
The row centres over Sheffield Council wanting to avoid a block that is all the same sort of flat.
Code wants to fill it entirely with studio flats, small flats with their own cooking facilities, with the provision of other social spaces on other floors.
Sheffield Council wants them to make 14 per cent of the flats ‘en-suite’, where the flats are built around a shared lounge and kitchen.
Code says it has already spent £10m on the project, but can only continue with the £125m scheme if it gets the finance - which it says its bank will only approve if it is constructing a building containing only ‘shared living’ studio flats.
Mr Lewis said the sort of flats that they want to create have become popular across the country in recent years, but had become so since Sheffield last drew up its housing policies.
He said they were a cheap way for young people to find a flat, and were less expensive than a traditional one bedroom flat. “It is a stepping stone from student accommodation,” he said.
“It just means it’s affordable, and it’s very popular with graduates and young professionals, when they leave university.
“This application was an attempt not to have to go to appeal. This is ultimately just arguing about whether there is a cooker in the room.
“Even if we lose, who wins? We would just have to mothball the concrete frame.”
He said the plans were now likely to go to appeal in September.
The company says ‘co-living’ is a form of purpose-built rented housing generally comprising individual units and large amounts of shared communal space.
Code says100 per cent co-living units is not unusual but reflects how the sector typically operates, with comparable schemes in Sheffield and elsewhere overwhelmingly or entirely comprising co-living accommodation.
It says the proposed units are not sub-standard studio flats but purpose-designed co-living units supported by substantial communal facilities, management arrangements and tenancy terms that together provide a high quality form of residential accommodation, and would widen access to city centre living by offering a more affordable all-inclusive residential product, while also helping to diversify housing choice and relieve pressure on other parts of the private rented sector.
While the main block will be 26 storeys, the council has agreed that the height of two other blocks in the scene can be changed from 14 to 16 floors and from 10 floors 12 floors.
Backing the refusal of the change to the housing mix, a council report stated: “The potential benefits of the development scheme are significant in terms of regeneration of a vacant site in the heart of the city centre, the jobs and investment the development would create during both the construction and operational phase and the much-needed new housing the development would deliver.
But it added: “ What is proposed would be the largest single collection of homogenous substandard size units anywhere in the City, over 1,000 identical units stacked within a tall building on one of the key city centre development sites.
“Amending the floor plans to allow a 100 per cent studio scheme would not only be negative in the context of the overall diversity / quality of housing options within Sheffield City Centre but would also result in a monotonous monolithic development denuded of the vibrancy which a mix of accommodation types could bring in terms of attracting different types of resident and breaking up the otherwise repetitive internal layout and floorplan.”
The ward Councillors for the site opposed the plans for all-studio flats.
Green Coun Ruth Mersereau said the individual flats were too small.