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East Midlands: In Focus – Nottingham on the rise with urban living boom in city centre

Nottingham is firmly back in the international spotlight and with it will come significant development and investment in ‘urban living’ for its city centre.

Nottinghamshire and the city of Nottingham are targeting a significant level of planning and development growth. With excellent road connectivity, planned rail improvements and a booming student population ready to move onto graduate urban living, much of this growth is centred around Nottingham City. But there are challenges. Current student retention rate and low uptake of rail travel to name a few. Watch the video below for an overview of the opportunities and issues facing the region, and the plans to promote growth. 

Opportunities within Nottingham City

With Premier League football returning to Nottingham in the same year that it was confirmed high-speed rail services will serve its city centre, the East Midlands’ second biggest city is unlikely to be number two in the region for much longer. 

But the truth is Nottingham has been on the up for some time now. One look at what the city has to offer, and it is not hard to understand why. Significant investment has already been made in public transport (tram and bus) which is tied with future plans for electrification and line speed improvements through the Integrated Rail Plan (with journey times to Birmingham cut to less than half an hour).

The population is growing and getting younger, with an expected rise of around 20,000 in the city centre by 2028. Nottingham has the largest pipeline of student accommodation outside of London, with over 11,000 student bedrooms either having planning permission or under construction (as of June 2022). This is on top of almost 28,000 bedspaces that exist within the city for the 2022/23 academic year.

To put this into perspective, its fellow Midlands city, Birmingham, had around 2,500 bedspaces under construction with a further 2,000 bedspaces with planning permission (as of January 2021). 

Added to that, rental growth within the student private sector continues to be higher than the national average over recent years due to the scale in demand, with a legacy of older accommodation stock that needs to be replaced or updated.

And it’s not just student accommodation that is seeing a development boom. Residential development in the city centre continues to gather pace. Around 1,000 residential units were granted planning permission in and around the city centre in the last 12 months, and this figure is expected to grow significantly with a number of large-scale residential proposals recently submitted to Nottingham City Council and currently under consideration. It’s clear investors and developers are seeing this potential. 

A young, vibrant population with graduates that are keen to remain in Nottingham presents an opportunity for an urban renaissance of the city centre, and with an increased population comes increased spending and investment. The need to retain graduates from its universities will give rise to political and planning pressures to deliver appropriate urban living options, such as co-living, Build-to-Rent and open market apartments, for this demographic in the city. Nottingham City Council is aware of this opportunity and has proven to be a pro-development and pragmatic authority. On this footing and with its great potential, Nottingham can get firmly back to being number one in the East Midlands. 

Opportunities in the wider Nottinghamshire region

Whilst the greatest opportunity for Nottinghamshire lies in city centre growth, Nottinghamshire, as a whole will be a key area of economic growth in coming years, with the East Midlands Freeport, proposed rail improvements, including HS2, and the establishment of the Greater Nottingham Planning Partnership, to name but a few opportunities.

To find out more about opportunities in Nottingham please contact Ben Williams, Jessica Herritty or Phillip Ivory.

Click here to learn more about planning and development plans across the East Midlands counties. 

29 June 2022