Former Plymouth bar to become student rooms

The site will be purpose built to meet today's demand

A once popular bar in Plymouth which has been vacant for four years is to be converted into student accommodation.

The city council’s planning committee supported an application by Justin Bryce of Bruce Properties for 40-42 North Hill, which involves adding two floors for 16 students onto the former Mouse Trap pub which later became Old Tom’s.

Councillors were told that a higher proportion of students now want purpose built accommodation after their first year of study.

The accommodation is often of a better standard, better managed and closer to the university than houses of multiple occupation (HMOs), said officers.

The four-minute walk from the university campus made it an ideal location for students and it would free up older properties for young professionals and families, said Cllr Jeremy Goslin (Lab Peverell).

But Cllr Steve Ricketts (Ind, Drake) said the North Hill area in the city centre is at “saturation point” for student housing and the building should stay as a commercial unit to help the high street. He claimed there is an inbalance of housing in North Hill.

Cllr Maddi Bridgeman (Ind, Moor View) agreed, saying the building should be converted for young professionals or for people who  want to stay in the city and “contribute towards its economy”.

“If it was, I would be cartwheeling around the Council House,” she said.

But the building was referred to as “an eyesore” by Cllr Angela Penrose (Lab, Compton) because it had been empty since 2019, and she hoped the conversion would take the pressure off other residential areas where homes had been converted into student flats, causing some “quite severe tensions”.

Cllr Carol Ney said her experience is that professionals did not want to live in student areas, and purpose built halls had provided the best living accommodation for her two daughters when they attended university.

The meeting heard that after a drop in the student population before 2020, the number of young people coming to study in Plymouth is rising and the university supports the application, claiming students demand a higher quality of living accommodation.

Chairman of the planning committee Bill Stevens (Lab, Devonport) said: “We are a university city and the student population contributes greatly to all aspects of our life in Plymouth; culturally, economically and socially, and this application is tailor made.

“If it does take the pressure of other accommodation for families that has got to be a good thing.”

He requested that officers researched how many older properties and HMOs had been released as a result of purpose built student accommodation.