Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) - notice period survey: responses summary

1. Introduction

This section will briefly consider some context to Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) in Scotland, and two surveys carried out by the Scottish Government on notice periods.

Housing Emergency

In May 2024 the Scottish Parliament passed an amended motion (S6M-13197) that “Scotland is in a housing emergency.” This followed similar housing emergency declarations in several local authority areas in 2023 and 2024 (Bartlett, Berry & Cromarty 2024). Subsequent and ongoing work by a wide range of stakeholders has sought to address this (e.g. Scottish Government 2024b, COSLA 2024, Edinburgh City Council 2024). Against the background of these wider housing pressures, specific factors have been highlighted which may be impacting on PBSA demand and supply in Scotland.

Factors impacting on PBSA demand

Multiple pressures on student housing across Scotland have been identified (Campbell et al 2024). For example:

• Research suggests Scottish students have become increasingly dependent on PBSA (Gallagher 2023).
• It has been reported that PBSA supply has not been grown proportionately with an overall rise in student numbers (SPF 2023).
• Specific pressures have been reported for PBSA in Scottish cities such as Edinburgh (Kallin 2024) and Glasgow (Gibb, Lawson & Dickson 2024).
• A 2024 UK-wide survey found that nearly a third of applicants thought there were not enough accommodation options in their chosen city (O’Neill et al 2024).
• The cost of private accommodation has been reported as one of the persistent major pressures for students (Universities Scotland 2023).
• Student respondents in Scotland have reported relatively expensive average rent compared to the rest of the UK (Butler 2025).
• In the Student Finance and Wellbeing Study (SFWS) Scotland 2023-2024, students highlighted the high cost of rent (including university-owned accommodation, PBSA or private rentals) as a key issue which impacted on their experiences of accommodation. Halls of residence, both university-owned and private, were viewed as being particularly expensive (Scottish Government 2024a).

Factors impacting on PBSA supply

While there is a paucity of Scottish-specific data, several factors have been identified as impacting on PBSA developers and supply. Examples include:

• High development costs, historically high interest rates, and more stringent planning requirements (HEPI 2023; Hampton et al 2023).
• It has been argued that growth in PBSA supply may have contributed to slowing rent increases more effectively than rent caps (HEPI 2023).
• Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have been identified as among the most attractive UK cities for PBSA investors and developers (Valentine 2023).
• The proportion of private PBSA provision is growing (NUS Scotland 2024), with private sector providers purportedly expected to be the main providers of new supply over the next decade (McCann, Hutchison, Adair 2020).

PBSA Review Group Recommendation

• The Scottish Government received eleven recommendations from the PBSA Review Group, which were published in Parliamentary Question (PQ) S6W-25244 in February 2024. Recommendation 2 focussed on PBSA notice periods:

“That the Scottish Government consults widely on the scope to legislate on PBSA regulation, specifically in respect of notice periods and cooling off period for PBSA tenants, including identifying what circumstances should apply in such cases and potential impact on investment and rent levels.”

• The findings of the research described in this report may help to inform the terms of this recommendation.
• The full list of recommendations is included in Annex C.

Student and Provider Surveys

Between July and October 2024, the Scottish Government issued two surveys on PBSA notice periods, hosted on Citizen Space:

• The student survey included eleven questions, with two of these being multi-part questions.
• The provider survey included fourteen questions, with two of these being multi-part questions.

To ensure as wide a distribution as possible, Scottish Government officials took the following actions:

• All members of the PBSA Review Group were asked to circulate the link widely to their relevant organisations.
• The link to the student survey was sent to all institutions for inclusion on their individual websites, and to all student representative councils / unions to bring to the attention of their members and to the National Union of Students.
• The link to the student survey was also included on the Student Information Scotland website (hosted by SAAS).
• Officials facilitated three information sessions in August and September 2024 to explain what information we were seeking to obtain.
• The full list of questions for both surveys is provided in Annex D.

Limitations

Due to several limitations, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from the survey results. While the findings may be reasonably interpreted as approximately indicative, they are subject to considerable uncertainty. Important limitations include:

• Small sample size: There were relatively small numbers of respondents to both surveys. Consequently the results cannot be assumed to be representative, and may not be generalisable.
  • Student survey - 171 respondents.
  • Provider survey - 35 respondents.
• Base rate and missing data: not all respondents answered all questions, resulting in considerable variation in number of responses per question. Respondents were free to not answer any question. Answers per question ranged from:
  • Student survey - between 6 and 170 responses per question.
  • Provider survey – between 2 and 35 responses per question.
• Data not representative: from the limited information available, the composition of the sample suggests that the samples cannot be assumed to be representative of Scottish PBSA as a whole.
  • The student survey appears to be dominated by students who had stayed in PBSA owned by a limited group of universities. A much smaller proportion of student respondents had experience of private PBSA. Only one student respondent reported having stayed in PBSA owned by a Further Education (FE) institution. Some students were unsure whether their accommodation was private or university provided.
  • The provider survey had somewhat more private providers than universities. Similar to the student survey, FE representation was minimal.

Methodological Approach

• Excel documents and word reports automatically generated by Citizen Space were used as a starting point to scrutinise the results.
• Figures cited below are rounded to zero decimal places. Given the small samples, missing data and highly variable number of responses, all figures should be interpreted as approximate.
• Unless stated otherwise, this report will refer to percentage of respondents who answered a particular question, as opposed to percentage of overall respondents.
• Any personal data, sensitive information or potentially identifying information of either students and/or providers have been removed from any subsequent analysis and/or reporting.
• To promote transparency and to be explicit on the limitations of the findings, tables presenting the number of respondents who answered each question are included in Annexes E and F.