Those folk protesting that social housing and not student accommodation would be better for the site of the Keiller Centre are wrong.

The site in my mind isn’t suitable for students or indeed for anyone wanting to live in the city centre.

I can scarcely think of a gloomier and more dispiriting place to live, irrespective of whether I was a student or a long-term tenant.

So whether it’s the proposed six-storey student flat block on the site of the derelict Keiller Centre, with 318-bed purpose-built student accommodation, or whether the site is to be demolished for much-needed social housing, both propositions are, I think, ill-conceived.

‘Not every parcel of available land is suitable for housing’

The original Keiller factory on the site before the shopping centre was famous for marmalade and sweets, but it also produced jam at one time; and squeezing either type of accommodation into that grim and tightly constrained site would place any residents living there in a real jam.

I can imagine that anyone drawing up plans to sell the development as an attractive place to live will offer glossy brochures and online pictures of sunny uplands streaming with light and sunshine.

In which case,........

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