IN Brief:
- Watkin Jones has secured committee backing for a 400-unit co-living tower in Cardiff.
- The 33-storey scheme replaces an earlier student accommodation proposal for the site.
- Formal permission is expected after completion of a Section 106 agreement.
Watkin Jones has secured planning committee backing for a 33-storey co-living tower in Cardiff city centre.
The developer has received a resolution to grant planning permission for the Custom House Street scheme, subject to completion of a Section 106 agreement. Formal planning permission is expected in late summer.
The project will deliver 400 fully furnished co-living studios on a long-vacant city centre site close to Cardiff Central Station and St David’s Shopping Centre. Plans include shared kitchens, dining areas, lounges, fitness facilities, and landscaped communal areas.
The scheme replaces an earlier 42-storey student accommodation tower that was approved in 2016 but did not progress. Watkin Jones has recast the site around co-living, reducing the height and changing the residential model in response to current rental demand.
The proposed tower includes a three-storey arched brick plinth designed to create a stronger relationship with the surrounding streetscape. The developer said the scheme will help meet demand from young professionals and smaller households seeking managed rental homes in the city centre.
Cardiff has become an important market for Watkin Jones. At Central Quay, Kimpton has completed the first MEP phase for Watkin Jones’ build-to-rent scheme on the former Brains Brewery site, where 718 apartments are being delivered across two towers.
The Custom House Street approval adds another high-density rental model to Cardiff’s development pipeline. Build-to-rent, co-living, and purpose-built student accommodation are all competing for urban sites, shaped by planning policy, viability, operator demand, finance costs, and changing household structures.
Co-living schemes place different demands on design and construction compared with conventional apartments. Private studios are smaller, but shared kitchens, lounges, amenity spaces, management areas, servicing, fire strategy, acoustic performance, vertical transport, and building systems carry greater weight in the operating model.
Those operational requirements need to be built into the scheme from the start. Poor circulation, weak acoustic separation, undersized lifts, difficult maintenance access, or poorly coordinated MEP can quickly undermine a building designed for intensive occupation. The success of co-living depends on the shared spaces working as reliably as the private rooms.
The shift from student accommodation to co-living also reflects changing investor and planning conditions. Student schemes remain important in many UK cities, but they are sensitive to university growth patterns, local housing politics, and viability pressures. Co-living can offer another route for dense urban sites where transport access and city-centre employment support demand from younger renters and single-person households.
For the construction team, the Cardiff tower will bring familiar high-rise constraints. Logistics, craneage, site storage, façade sequencing, MEP risers, fire stopping, commissioning, and neighbour interfaces will all need tight coordination on a central plot. The brick plinth and public realm treatment will also require careful detailing if the scheme is to sit comfortably at street level.
The planning resolution gives Watkin Jones a clearer route to delivery on a site that has remained vacant for years. Formal permission, legal agreements, procurement, and market conditions will now determine how quickly the tower moves from approval to construction.
