New Halls to be Constructed at North Haugh
The University of St Andrews is looking for a contractor to construct a new 155-bed hall of residence at the North Haugh. The new hall will be built at “Gap Site 3” between Agnes Blackadder Hall and Andrew Melville Hall, land which consists currently of grass space and a small parking area. Fife Council granted planning permission for the project back in February 2022.
At an estimated cost of £18 million, the hall is targeted for completion by spring 2025, according to publications from the University’s estates department. The new momentum comes amidst an acute housing crisis in St Andrews, with soaring rents and limited availability, as some students have been pushed to live in Dundee or other surrounding towns. Since 2020, the University has maintained a contract with Mears Student Life to offer housing in Dundee to hundreds of students.
The Gap Site 3 project is one piece of the University’s ongoing strategy to construct new student housing. Through a partnership with Campus Living Villages, the University opened both Whitehorn Hall and Powell Hall in 2019, housing a combined 400 students on former gap sites around the North Haugh.
This may be an attempt to provide new beds in line with growth in student numbers. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 10,805 students attended St Andrews during the 2021-2022 academic year, up by over 1,000 from 9,645 in 2019-2020. Meanwhile, planning objections and supply chain challenges have caused delays to the reconstruction of Albany Park, a 340-bed residential complex which was demolished in 2020 due to health and safety concerns.
The University’s initial plans called for a new Albany Park complex housing almost 1,000 students to be constructed by 2022. But after local objections, the number of planned beds was reduced to 681 by the time Fife Council gave its approval in 2021. The University has yet to reveal when construction at Albany Park will commence.
Regarding Gap Site 3, Emma Hilary Gould, a fourth-year student of Modern History, told The Saint, “I am glad to see the University taking steps to increase student housing. I am happy to see that they are acting quickly”.
But Ms. Gould thinks the University should be doing more to construct new residence halls and increase housing: “I wonder if it could hold more than 155 students given the number of extra students they’ve admitted”. If construction finishes according to plan in May 2025, the University aims for the hall’s first residents to move in the following September, in time for the 2025-2026 academic year.
According to the University’s estates department, “Gap Site 3 will utilise an established high-quality bedroom design and incorporate successful communal and social design elements, to ensure a strong sense of community within the new building”. Renderings of the hall depict three attached blocks of three levels each, with one block matching the angle of the closer wing of AMH, and the other two aligned to form quadrangles with ABH.
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