SWANSEA: St Helen’s Road student block to open as 72 homeless studios in the new year

The student block on St Helen’s Road that the council wants as its second city-centre home for people leaving homelessness will open early next year, cabinet was told on Wednesday, with the keys changing hands next week.

Cllr Andrea Harrington said the former Sun Alliance House, run for the past few years as Boutique Student Living, would give the council 72 more beds, each with its own kitchen, once “very straightforward” works are finished, which she expected to take a matter of months.

It sits alongside Llys Glas, the former central police station on Alexandra Road, which opened in January with 68 rooms and 24-hour support.

Who owns it, who runs it

The arrangement, set out in the planning statement filed last November, is that Codi, the housing association formerly known as Pobl, buys and holds the building and leases it to the council, which commissions and oversees the service. Codi provides the housing and building management, the council the support.

The building is to be converted from 80 student studios to 76 self-contained move-on units and four staff and support rooms, according to the application; Wednesday’s meeting was told 72 beds. Each studio keeps its own front door, bathroom and kitchenette, with internal alterations only and no change to the outside of the six-storey block.

Staff will be on site 24 hours a day, with support workers offering one-to-one and group help. Residents come through agreed referral routes and assessment, under tenancy conditions and house rules. “The scheme is not an open-access hostel, night shelter or emergency facility,” the statement says.

It stays car-free apart from two blue-badge bays and a drop-off space, with 22 cycle stands in the basement. Codi’s transport consultants say it will generate slightly fewer journeys than the students did.

The permission that hasn’t come

The change of use application, 2025/2425/FUL, was submitted on 18 November last year. As we reported in January, officers recommended approval and it was listed for the planning committee on 13 January. The council’s planning register shows it as undetermined ten months on.

The application describes the works as internal alterations only, which do not need planning permission; the change of use does. Codi’s statement asks for a condition requiring an operational management plan, covering access, visitors, incidents, anti-social behaviour and safeguarding, to be agreed with the council before anyone moves in.

That plan, the statement says, will be written jointly by Codi and the council. The council is both the commissioner of the service and the planning authority that decides the application.

Third student block to change what it’s for

Sun Alliance House is the third city-centre student block in a year to look for other occupants. Llys Glas itself was Codi’s student accommodation until the conversion, and in August the owners of the Oldway Centre, the 556-bed tower by High Street station, asked the council to let 28 rooms to non-students for five years because the block is running well below capacity.

Rob Stewart said in 2019 that purpose-built blocks like the Oldway Centre would “reduce the demand for HMO conversions in neighbouring local communities”. Seven years on, one is asking to become part-HMO and two are becoming supported housing.

Why the council wants it

Harrington told cabinet the number of people in emergency and temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfast, is rising year on year and is flagged as a red risk in the council’s performance report. “We’re doing everything we can to get people out of bed and breakfast and into better quality temporary accommodation where they can cook a meal,” she said.

Llys Glas has shared communal kitchens; the St Helen’s Road building has one in every room, “so it should be a much better facility for people”.

Rob Stewart told the same meeting that homelessness and adult social care were the two pressures behind the spending restrictions cabinet adopted, and Harrington said the housing capital programme was likely to underspend again this year because of the nitrates hold on new-build sites.

The statement cites Llys Glas, approved in 2024, as the precedent: officers accepted then that supported accommodation in the Swansea Central Area fitted the council’s regeneration and rapid rehousing aims.