‘High quality’ student accommodation will be included as part of plans to regenerate Hartlepool town centre, according to council chiefs.

Work is currently being undertaken on a student needs assessment looking at the anticipated growth in student population in the town.

Hartlepool Borough Council chiefs told the Regeneration Services Committee the needs assessment will contribute to part of a planned council town centre masterplan.

The funding for the plan comes as Hartlepool has been chosen as one of 100 places that have been invited to develop proposals for a Town Deal, as part of the Governments £3.6bn Towns Fund.

Although the student study will feed into the masterplan, councillors also requested the council conducts its own option appraisal into providing new student accommodation in the town.

They said this was to ensure the project keeps progressing and doesn’t get left behind, adding it could bring more investment into the town.

Coun Christopher Akers-Belcher, chair of the committee, said: “We have a problem in the town now in regards to student accommodation and its poor, and the report will highlight that we have a number of students who live in poor private sector accommodation.”

Councillors also highlighted the importance of student accommodation being included in the council plan for the forthcoming years.

Council officers also noted any student accommodation would also have a wider regeneration benefits to the area, along with benefits to students coming to the town.

Coun Ann Marshall said: “There’s the need for high quality social housing for students so that when they do come to the town they are going to have somewhere appropriate to say rather than private sector housing that maybe not up to the standard we should be providing.”

Higher education providers in Hartlepool including the Northern School of Art, Hartlepool College of Further Education and Hartlepool 6th Form College will be consulted as part of the work.

Coun Akers-Belcher also noted bringing in high quality student accommodation could have the secondary benefit of improving the social housing offer in the area.

He said: “We know there are 140/150 houses plus across the borough where students are living in and they are entitled to an exemption on council tax.

“If we move them into high quality student accommodation and they lived in that it would release all those properties for social housing.

“It would raise the standard of private sector accommodation and the council would be a beneficiary of receiving council tax as well as filling the need in our housing strategy, that we need more social housing in the town.”

It comes as last year Rob Collier and John Wood MBE, of Advanced Retail Solutions Ltd announced plans for new student accommodation to the rear of their newly refurbished Advanced House in Wesley Square, including the derelict Engineers Club.