A student living there wondered what would happen to people like her if the plans were approved
Another large building in Swansea is going to be used for people in need of temporary housing. The six-storey student development on St Helen’s Road will be acquired by a housing association, Pobl Group, while Swansea Council supports the occupants and tries to find them somewhere longer term to live.
One of the students currently living there said she’d only found out about the change of use application when she spotted a notification on a lamppost.
Addressing the council’s planning committee at a meeting on January 13, she said: “The day I saw the notification was the day after I had paid my deposit for next year.”
The third year medical student said she completely understood the need to help people in need of housing but wondered what would happen to students living there, and whether addressing one problem might inadvertently create another. Never miss a Swansea story by signing up to our newsletter here
A council planning officer said the building hadn’t been bought from the current owners yet as far as he was aware. What happened to students, he said, would be a matter for them and its operator.
A report before the committee said the block was built as offices and used to be Sun Alliance House. A planning application submitted in 2016 to turn it into 78 self-contained student studios was then approved, and it was later reconfigured to add two more studios.
The plan is to largely keep it as it is, although more office space will be needed, meaning there’ll be 76 studios. There’ll also be 24/7 management on-site.
Councillor and cabinet member with responsibility for homes, Andrea Williams, addressed the committee to say 341 households were currently living in bed and breakfast and other types of temporary accommodation in Swansea.
She said it was “the highest ever we have seen”, not a problem unique to Swansea, and that the self-contained studios on St Helen’s Road were a very high specification compared to bed and breakfasts.
Cllr Williams said the proposed supported accommodation was much-needed, notwithstanding a newly-converted building – Llys Glas, on the corner of Orchard Street and Alexandra Road – also starting to accommodate people in need of a roof over their head this week.
She said occupiers of the studios would be able to claim housing benefit which wasn’t the case for those in bed and breakfasts, where costs were funded by the council.
After a discussion in which councillors asked about the students currently there, whether the studios would just be for single people, and whether a planning condition could be tightened up to ensure there was 24/7 on-site management, the committee voted by 10 to one to approve the application.
