PBSA plotted for Liverpool’s St Anne Street

Dear oh dear, no pre-app discussions? Given the lack of ‘free go’ there’s a strong chance the council simply refuse the application and force a resubmission to address any issues with the scheme – such as glaring policy conflict by not including predominantly cluster flats over studios…

Nice use of colour.

You can see how AI is going to take over architects – unless they up their game. This is a horrible scheme that has been value engineered to within an inch of its life.

Regarding the previous comment about the lack of pre-app, a good point is made about the lack of free go. However, given pre-app discussions can sometimes go one for years, don’t blame them for firing it in, even if rejected – it’s probably quicker!
However, studio accommodation is a strange decision. Where is the demand for that now and is it really the best type of accommodation for students to live in? The developer obviously just wants to flip the site and probably doesn’t really care. I’d have thought the market would favour clusters though. All in all, a bit of a strange one, especially in that location, which isn’t exactly prime.

Does this company actually do construction, as their company profile says they buy and sell real estate.
Suppose there’s always a first time.

Really odd choice of rather grim site for PBSA given what developers have claimed to be lack of demand for completed stuff nearer the campuses/local facilities, justifying change of use.
“Will ultimately look to sell the site on” seems to be the key phrase here for a development that *if* completed will look much less nice and won’t be aimed at students at all.

If this remains as PBSA then it will get changed to cluster flats – that’s what the market demands and as others have pointed out, studios have gone unoccupied in much better locations, leading to a change of use. The planning department will also want to see how the building could be repurposed for alternative uses (NDSS compliant resi, or hotel, for example) if the demand for PBSA drops. Anyway, I’ll stop giving the developer free planning advice… apparently they’re already paying someone for that.

Is that a porsche? Wealthy students

Another of the Liverpool registered developers with no actual record of actually developing out any site in the city.

The scheme follows a standard PBSA formula, with familiar massing and layout. With the original architect unlikely to take it forward, the project has the feel of a “get consent and move it on” exercise rather than a fully worked‑through, delivery‑ready proposal.

That shows in the Planning submission: the documents are light, suggesting the priority is securing permission rather than presenting a resolved scheme. With a target completion of August 2028, turning a lean application into a buildable project will take a lot of work, and the timeline looks optimistic.

One advantage is that the building stays under 18 metres, avoiding HRB status and the heavier regulatory burden that comes with it. That may help the applicant push a quicker, more pragmatic route through planning.

Overall, it’s a bit of a seat‑of‑your‑pants submission. Whether that pays off is another matter, but it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

Plotted…..what on Earth does that imply.

Plot (verb): to mark (a route or position) on a chart. In this case, a figurative term used to indicate that the developer is in the middle of mapping out the course for a future development to be delivered.
That is what it implies and nothing else. Understood that this could have been confused with the other definition of plot, which was not the intention as is clear by the context of the story.

April 07, 2026 at 8:07 pm

By Julia Hatmaker

This scheme looks well designed and unlike other banal looking buildings it’s articulate in design and respectful to its neighbouring buildings. There’s nothing unusual in any city of a development designed to have the option of being built through a JV or through a sale to a developer. Liverpool council is known for delays and capricious behaviour from a pre-app scheme to an eventual planning consent. With a tight build programme and a scheme that quite frankly should be uncontroversial in planning terms, I hope it gets supported.

To read the comments on here you’d think this development is a ‘take a chance’ project – what utter nonsense. Just read the planning submission, it’s fully supported with all the required planning, design & technical assessments even though it’s not a particular large development for an appropriate land use in a highly accessible location on the outside edge of the city centre. It’s for student accommodation that is explained in the planning statement as being unapologetically designed to meet a demand from the post-graduate and mature students sector, who prefer self-contained studios (policy H5 of LCC local plan encourages a mix including clusters but crucially it doesn’t require it so there’s absolutely no conflict with this policy!).
Given the planning and architectural docs alone would be in excess of £150k, as a resident in the area and having seen some of the other major projects (including a major student scheme with clusters) stall in the area, in my humble view, this project is well-considered design backed by a fully reasoned and justified planning submission.
I welcome this project and look forward to it being completed.

Lets hope these don’t end up with the same fate as the ones on Shaw St which are definitely not student apartments. Hopefully Liverpool City Council will look at the offering strategically and see that the demand has fallen – just look at all the student ones they have thrown up around London Road – and now the developer is passing them over to YMCA as supported type living. Why arent there more 2 and 3 bed apartments so families can do city centre living – if they so choose – we dont need more 1 beds.

@ Lizzy 1.56pm, there’s plenty of land to chuck up 2 or 3 bed apartments but it appears the developers would prefer another location than here at present.
We certainly don’t want a load of suburban semis round there either such as happened along Park Lane, which is totally inappropriate for the inner-city.

@Lizzy Baggot – if there was a market for 2 and 3 bedroom family apartments, you can bet someone would want to build them. The reality is that the market demand simply doesn’t exist at the level the council wants it to. Yes there is demand for family housing in Liverpool, but trying to deliver it in the form of city centre apartments is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. You only have to look at the likes of the Lexington and other city centre apartment schemes delivered over the last 10 years or so to see that the token number of 3 bed apartments aren’t being occupied by families, but by people sharing (i.e., small HMOs).

Good idea right across the road by plod hq

I once lived in a studio apartment for six months.
We used to call them bedsits.
It was one of the most depressing places I have ever lived.
Not because of the neighbourhood, or my state of mind, or my position in life,
but because the novelty of a sofa bed soon wears off, and what first seems practical quickly becomes frustrating and then depressing.
Bedsits, ahem, studio apartments, should be against the law on mental health grounds.
They are nothing more than greedy landlords maximising profit at the expense of poor souls forced to live in hutches.

@ Anon 11.34am, you don’t seem to know the difference between a bedsit and a studio. The proposed apartments in this case are studios with their own separate bathrooms, plus a living area for a kitchen and for sleeping, there is nothing shared about them. In addition any residents, who you regard as poor souls, are not forced to live here, they have a choice, if they view them and don’t like them they can try somewhere else. You are being deliberately misleading and when you use words like like greedy, maximising profit, and hutches then to me you come over as anti development, and anti freemarket.

@ Anon April 11, 2026 at 9:27 am

Let’s stop pretending a private toilet suddenly turns a bedsit into a home. It’s still a single room designed for maximum extraction, not human life.

Your ‘free market’ argument is a delusional fantasy. When developers lobby to lower minimum space standards and flood cities with these units, they aren’t ‘offering choice’—they are collapsing the floor of the housing market so that a ‘hutch’ becomes the only thing an average person can afford. That isn’t a choice; it’s economic Coercion.

You call it ‘anti-development,’ but history calls it slum-building. We’ve seen this cycle before: greedy developers warehouse the ‘poor souls’ you clearly despise in cramped, soul-crushing boxes, pocket the profit, and leave the taxpayer to deal with the inevitable mental health crisis and social decay that follows. If your vision of ‘progress’ is a generation of people living, eating, and sleeping in a glorified hallway, then your ‘market’ is a failure and your development is a societal parasite.

You’ve one life, try to do good.