Plans to demolish five-storey Leeds city centre office block and build more than 700 student flats

Blenheim House, a five-storey office block on Duncombe Street would be knocked down to make way for the scheme.

The project would be 20 storeys at its highest point and provide 717 student bed spaces near the site of the former Yorkshire Evening Post building, which is itself being redeveloped.

Leeds City Council has been in early-stage discussions with companies including Balfour Beatty and a formal planning application is expected.

A pre-application report to the council’s City Plans Panel shows the building would include outdoor garden areas and cycle storage.

It said the new development would be close to other new student accommodation blocks and could help ease pressure on private family housing in the city.

The report said: “A future planning application will need to provide a fuller understanding of how the scheme contributes to student bed-space numbers but does not create or add to an excessive concentration of this type of use in the area.”

Safe walking routes to the city’s universities would be mapped as part of a future planning application.

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Rooms and studios in the development would be bigger than the minimum required size, the report said.

It said: “All rooms will have sufficient space for day to day living functions in excess of the emerging minimum standards.

“Following assessment, it is considered all private residential spaces and rooms will benefit from an outlook and adequate receipt of daylight and sunlight.”