Park Hill student flats plan set for green light

An application for The third phase of the redevelopment has been submitted to Sheffield City Council by Alumno Student Developments Limited and Urban Splash as joint applicants, detailing a total of “74 student accommodation units”, and will be considered by the council’s planning and highways committee at a meeting next week.

Developers are also applying to create a range of mixed-use commercial space around South Block, where the student accommodation would be housed, car parking spaces and cycle storage.

Phase 2 of the plans -to provide almost 200 residential units, commercial space and car parking - was approved in 2017 and work is set to begin this year. The first phase - which saw the regeneration of 263 flats, of which almost 100 were classed as affordable homes - was completed in March 2016.

The planning report states: “Park Hill was built between 1957 and 1961 by the Corporation of Sheffield.

“This prominent grade II* listed brutalist structure is now the largest listed building in Europe.

“A characteristic feature of Park Hill are the deck access ‘streets in the sky’ that link all four main blocks with walkways wide enough to accommodate a milk float.

“The decks, which were intended to replicate the close community of a terraced street, occur at every third level and all front doors lead onto these. They are served by 13 passenger lifts and two large goods’ lifts.

“The proposed development comprises of external and internal alterations to the building for use as 74 student cluster flats (356 bedspaces), 350m² of flexible ground floor commercial space and a cycle store for 196 cycle spaces.

“The proposals also include the provision of landscaping, 8 car parking spaces, service areas, a sub-station and boundary treatments.”

The flatshave become a regular feature of film and television, with Doctor Who using them as a location for scenes, as well as Sheffield-based Warp’s Ghost Stories, starring Martin Freeman, and in a feature film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s short story How to Talk to Girls at Parties, where it doubles as a Croydon housing estate.

They are also featured in an Arctic Monkeys video and are referenced in the Pulp track ‘Sheffield Sex City’.

The committee is expected to grant both planning permission and listed building consent when the plans are discussed at a meeting of the council’s planning and highways committee when it meets at Sheffield Town Hall on Tuesday, July 24.