Your Tribe's growth across Deptford: when is student accommodation too much?
As Lewisham council approves another Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) scheme from Your Tribe at Sun Wharf, we look at Tribe's growth in the area and ask whether demand is as robust as it claims.
Lewisham council's strategic planning committee approved plans from Your Tribe to build 605 student rooms at Sun Wharf, Creekside at its meeting on 24 February.
This is the eight Your Tribe development in the area and only one application, Crown Wharf, has been refused.
Your Tribe is an arm of property developer Aitch Group and has become a dominant player in the profitable Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) market in South East London.
Campaigners objecting to the Sun Wharf development once again raised concerns about PBSA overconcentration in the area, asked whether student demand has peaked, and challenged the firm's argument that PBSA releases housing that can be used by families.
Your Tribe has rapidly expanded its sites Deptford and nearby, with schemes in Lewisham, Greenwich and Southwark.
Data from London datastore, hover to see site details. Created with datawrapper.
Aitch Group demonstrated its changed business priorities when it evicted around 150 tenants from its Vive Living flats at Childers Street in December 2024, months before applying to the council for change of use to HMO.
It has converted the building to student accommodation which is being marketed as Your Tribe Deptford, "The Luxe Collection", although so far Lewisham council has refused the change of use application.
Your Tribe has raised applications for seven other developments in the area, now including Sun Wharf. Only one application has been rejected, at the nearby site known as Crown Wharf.
Greenwich councillors refused the plans on grounds of height, massing and the impacts on strategic views, and Your Tribe's recent appeal was also rejected.
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Is demand for student accommodation rising?
The argument that PBSA is meeting rising demand and freeing up rental housing is crucial to developers, and Phoebe Juggins from Your Tribe reiterated this claim at a meeting with local residents on 15 January.
She pointed to the PBSA Demand and Market Assessment report which Your Tribe commissioned from agents Knight Frank.
It is based on open data from HESA, but stopped at 2022/23 academic year, ignoring the latest 2 years' of data.
The research depends heavily on data from four providers which are described as Higher Education Providers (HEPs) within proximity of Sun Wharf - King's College London, University of Greenwich, Goldsmiths University and Trinity Laban - and states that across the four, there are over 60,000 full-time students.
King's is providing over half of these numbers, although it is unclear why it was chosen as an HEP in proximity of Sun Wharf. All of the King's campuses except Guys are 45 minutes to 1 hour away by public transport.
Trinity Laban is a very small provider which reported only 1170 full-time students last year, 420 of them already in student accommodation or living at home.
Salamander examined the HESA data from 2022/23 onwards and found that contrary to Juggins' claims, there has not been growth in student numbers across the four HEPs.
Goldsmiths has actually seen a drop of 13% in student numbers between 2022/23 and 2024/25.
Juggins insisted that demand for international students was "being driven towards London due to restrictive visa policies in the USA".
However, international numbers have also been in decline at Goldsmiths, Kings and most significantly at Greenwich which saw a drop in international student numbers of 14% (1,525 students).
The drop in annual numbers of international postgraduates starting courses in the UK has been widely reported.
Student housing provider Unite Group has already started selling off property, including in London, due to the fall in international enrolment.
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