Construction has commenced on a new £33 million student accommodation development in Glasgow City Centre. 

The development at Jocelyn Square, owned by Urbanite Living with Robertson Construction Central Scotland as the main contractor, will be named ‘Clyde Court’.

Clyde Court is to serve Glasgow’s universities with its central location next to Glasgow High Court in an effort to address the shortage of student accommodation in recent years. 

The new development will provide 169 studio bedrooms over the six-storey building. 

In addition, the block will include a cinema, gym, two social study rooms and two private dining ‘MasterChef’ kitchens. 

Planning permission was first granted for the site four years ago, but these initial approvals expired when the site's previous owner went into administration, but Urbanite won an appeal for an extension.

A shortage of student accommodation has created problems for universities in the last few years, with the University of Glasgow housing homeless students in hotels at the beginning of the last academic year and telling students who could not find a place to live not to enrol. 

Glasgow University agreed to a cap on student numbers for the next five years after pressure from its Student Representative Council (SRC) to address the student housing shortage.

Read more: Renting crisis: University of Glasgow students warned to not enrol amid lack of housing

A report commissioned by Universities UK found that Glasgow, alongside Manchester, has seen the highest rise in student numbers, along with the highest rent increases for student accommodation of all cities across the UK. 

Glasgow also lands in the bottom three UK cities for the amount of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) available for its student population. 

Project director at Urbanite, Adam Sandler, stated: “We are delighted to be able to start construction for this development. This project will help to regenerate an important strategic plot in the city of Glasgow, whilst delivering much needed new residential accommodation.

“Glasgow is one of the UK’s top university destinations with education space as well as student applications continuing to increase at a rapid pace. It is also one of the top two cities with the lowest privately-owned purpose-built student accommodation for the 2023/24 academic year. With the number of people studying in Glasgow set to rise to 1.75 million, there are currently nearly four students for every student bed in the city.

“Clyde Court will at least go some way to help alleviate that with uncompromising living spaces that is both sustainable and adaptable for the future whilst also supporting health and wellbeing of its occupants.”