Glasgow adds 6,000 student rooms over 10 years

Rents in Scotland's biggest city have skyrocketed in recent years due to a lack of supply and the council declared a housing emergency in 2023 amid "unprecedented pressures".

Earlier this month, it wrote to the owners of more than 2,500 vacant properties asking them to bring them back into use.

Meanwhile, the city's universities have seen numbers continue to rise.

Glasgow University has increased its student population by more than 12,000 since 2015, figures released by HESA show.

And Strathclyde University and Glasgow Caledonian University have also increased their student numbers significantly in the past decade, rising by about 3,000 and 5,000 respectively.

At the start of this academic year, a report co-authored by Glasgow University warned that thousands of students were at risk of homelessness after it suggested there was a student housing shortfall of more than 6,000 in the city.

Prof James White, a planning and urban design professor at Glasgow University, said that the new flats would bring "broadly positive benefits" to the city centre.

He said: "A lot of the student developments are on the periphery of Glasgow city centre, where the residential population is relatively low.

"These developments bring young people and commerce to these areas, so I think, in a sense, it's positive for the neighbourhoods."

In 2019, Glasgow City Council launched their city centre living strategy, which aims to boost the city centre population to 40,000 by 2035.

Prof White said that while these student developments addressed a current need for more accommodation, he is concerned about their longevity if the market for student housing drops.

"Being wholly reliant on students is problematic from a sustainability perspective," he said.

"We need a mix of different housing in the city centre - right now, its skewed towards students and how easy will it be to change those buildings in the future?

"If we're not also building parks and schools, if we do need to change the use of these buildings later, it will be hard for families to move in as they won't have the facilities they need."