It will change one end of the city centreHow the new towers could look when viewed from All Saints Park(Image: Pickard Cartwright for MMU/Unite Students via planning documents)

Thousands of student bedrooms are set to be built in halls of residence skyscrapers at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).

The uni’s Cambridge Halls, built around All Saints Park on Oxford Road, will be demolished and replaced by two towers, 30- and 24-storeys tall containing 2,302 student rooms, under new plans.

Manchester council is set to give the project, which will add more than 1,500 rooms to the area, planning permission on Thursday (August 28).

To see planning applications; traffic and road diversions and layout changes; and more, visit the Public Notices Portal HERE

It comes after MMU revised its plans following a row over a 29-year-old legal order. Campaigners claimed the original plans would have blocked a key cycling route on Cavendish Street, which broke the order closing the road.

Walk Ride Greater Manchester said a ‘stopping order’, issued in June 1996, gave MMU permission to close a section of Cavendish Street next to All Saints Park to motor vehicles — but only on the condition it ‘shall provide a new highway which shall be a footpath/cycleway along the route’.

“The existing space is 12 metres wide at its narrowest – and 20 metres wide for most of its length. Many public roads are narrower,” the group said in June.

“How can there not be enough room for a simple two-way segregated cycle track? MMU could easily lay out their new buildings and planted areas so that everyone can use the space safely. Instead they’ve made deliberate design decisions to exclude cycling.”

The new cycling route for Cavendish Walk(Image: Manchester council)

Active Travel England also had concerns, prompting MMU to confirm ‘the route would continue to function as pedestrian and cycle route with improvements to the space, including seating and planting’, a council planning report said.

Another eye-catching proposal going to Manchester planning committee next week is a bid to run DJ events in a warehouse near Victoria.

Applicant Connecting Dots Group has constructed a ‘dance floor, bar, front of house and a stage’ already, and now want to ‘regularise’ existing events.

Also recommended for approval, events should take place on Burstock Street, behind the Marble Arch Inn pub on Rochdale Road, at weekends until 2am — but no more than six times per month.

Councillors will also consider plans to open two Lidl supermarkets, in Charlestown and Rusholme, which have been objected to by a number of residents. Both are recommended to go ahead.

Manchester council’s planning committee will meet at 2pm on Thursday, August 28. You can watch it online here.