Fresh, which has been appointed to mobilise, market, lease and operate the 604-bed scheme, has fifteen years of experience in third-party management, with over 20,000 units across a range of rental living tenures currently within its remit across 27 cities and towns. Fresh currently operates over 60 student-living schemes, including one in central Edinburgh.

Mantle Yard, designed by Edinburgh-based Michael Laird Architects, is a former gasworks and naval yard being transformed into the largest private single-site student living scheme in the Scottish capital. The site’s heritage and role it played in lighting up Edinburgh when it was a gasworks inspired the name Mantle Yard; a mantle is an element of gas lights that were used across the city.

Mantle Yard is campus-style student living with six buildings around a landscaped central square and courtyard gardens, within walking distance of The Shore, in the heart of the sought-after Leith neighbourhood. Shared internal amenity spaces include study rooms, library, lounge, TV room, kitchen, gym and yoga spaces, with abundant cycle storage prioritising wellbeing and collaboration.

With construction well underway, led by McAleer & Rushe, completion is targeted ahead of the 2027/28 academic year.

Sarah Willoughby-Parsons, Head of Asset Management at HUB said:

“Mantle Yard is a truly exciting project for HUB, Bridges, HGP and Edinburgh. With demand for high-quality student accommodation continuing to grow, we’re proud to be delivering a scheme that not only meets that need but does so with ambition, design excellence, and a deep respect for the local context. Fresh brings a wealth of operational expertise, and we’re confident that it will help make Mantle Yard a thriving and well-managed community for students.”

Sam Scott, Managing Director at Fresh, said:

“We are delighted to be appointed to play a key role in bringing Mantle Yard to market. With our in-depth knowledge of the Edinburgh market and an understanding of the growing popularity of Leith, we are ideally positioned to successfully mobilise, market and operate this exciting property. Our proven track record and extensive experience in PBSA will ensure Mantle Yard is positioned for success.”

Located at 45 Beech Street on the edge of the Barbican Estate, the adaptive reuse scheme will convert and extend a 1950s office building into 174 modern co-living homes, designed by Stirling Prize-winning architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM).

It will be the first project in HUB and Bridges’ expanding co-living portfolio that the partners plan to build and hold, drawing on Bridges’ extensive experience of owning and operating real estate assets. In line with HUB and Bridges approach to co-living, the landmark scheme will provide the UK’s most central homes of this type and much-needed accommodation for City workers.

With strip-out of the existing building complete and enabling works underway, construction is expected to start following Gateway 2 approval. An application to the Regulator will be submitted in the coming weeks, with practical completion targeted for 2028.

To support this next phase of delivery, Firma Partners has provided a development loan for the project, with BBS Capital advising the parties in securing debt.

Sustainability is central to the project, which will reuse 90% of the existing building’s substructure and 65% of the superstructure, delivering a 34% embodied carbon saving compared to a new build scheme of a similar scale. An impressive 99.8% of materials have been recycled through the strip-out process.

Cornerstone will deliver the first professionally managed co-living homes in the City of London to support its dynamic workforce, which is one of the youngest, most highly skilled and international in the UK. In addition to 49,000 sq ft of living space, Cornerstone will offer residents 8,000 sq ft of shared amenities including co-working spaces, a gym, café, laundry, communal lounges and a roof terrace.

Cornerstone will be visually in keeping with the surrounding Barbican area and contribute to its revitalisation and activation. The location puts residents within a few minutes’ walking distance of Barbican, Farringdon and Moorgate stations, right in the heart of the City’s Culture Mile. The Elizabeth Line connection makes it a particularly attractive option for people working across London’s business districts.

Damien Sharkey, Managing Director at HUB, said: “We’re starting the year with strong momentum behind this landmark project and look forward to seeing it progress throughout 2026. Not only is Cornerstone our first co-living scheme in the City of London, but it is the first asset within our ultra-urban co-living portfolio that Bridges and HUB plan to retain beyond PC and operating. We see enormous potential in the sector and its role in shaping the future of urban living, and we are excited to see the benefits it will bring to the City of London upon completion.”

Simon Ringer, Head of Bridges Property Funds, said: “We are delighted to be undertaking this environmentally focused refurbishment project with our long-term partner HUB. Our funds have now secured positions in a platform of co-living schemes in prime locations in London, and we look forward to building these out for operation in a market that is starved of high-quality, flexible residential accommodation. By converting redundant office space to modern standards, we are also able to implement an environmental strategy that will significantly reduce carbon emissions, in accordance with our Fund objectives.”

Victor Librae, Chief Executive of Firma Partners, said: “We’re delighted to support Bridges and HUB on this landmark scheme. They are very experienced and have a strong track record. 45 Beech Street is a well-located, residential-led scheme that reflects the type of transitional, planning-led development we are set up to support. The structure of this facility has been designed to align with the realities of delivery and leasing in today’s market, while providing the sponsor with the flexibility needed to navigate the complexities of the Gateway system.”

Decarbonising real estate is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement goals. The built environment accounts for a significant share of global emissions, so the sector must play a leading role in reducing carbon.

Yet for investors, the path to decarbonisation is often unclear. Different standards and benchmarks across regions, inconsistent terminology and a lack of focus on embodied carbon make it difficult to compare assets and prioritise interventions.

Our Spectrum is designed to help navigate some of this complexity. The framework categorises assets into four levels of carbon performance, based on actual performance vs Science‑Based Targets, and provides practical steps to accelerate progress. It covers both operational and embodied carbon, ensuring a holistic approach to decarbonisation.

The ultimate aim is True Zero Buildings: assets that achieve zero emissions across the full lifecycle, without offsets. This feels ambitious today. But we believe it is achievable through greater innovation and collaboration.

Developed with insights from our investor community and industry experts, the Spectrum is intended as a starting point for change. By sharing it, we hope to encourage more dialogue, more partnerships and more action across the market.

You can read our paper on the Spectrum below – after this short explainer video featuring Bridges’ Michele Giddens, Maggie Loo and Henry Pepper.

This will be challenging, to say the least. Britain has some of the oldest, most inefficient housing stock in the developed world. And building the millions of new homes needed to tackle the housing crisis will only add to the sector’s carbon footprint.

The good news is that domestic emissions have actually been falling consistently over the last two decades, thanks to improved insulation, grid decarbonisation and warmer weather. Technologies like air source heat pumps and rooftop solar may not have had the hoped-for impact yet, but they can still play an important role in reducing emissions – as can new AI-powered developments in renewables and grid efficiency. Using these technologies to retrofit the UK’s leaky old homes would make a huge difference.

Equally, new homes are much more efficient operationally – and thanks to AI tools that also make building design and construction more efficient, coupled with advances in materials technology, we should see the embodied carbon associated with new-builds fall over time.

Critically, this is not just an environmental issue. Making our homes more energy-efficient also makes them cheaper to run, future-proofed against new regulation and better protected against climate change-related risks. That makes them more attractive to future buyers. So lower-carbon housing is not just an ecological (or even social) imperative: it’s an opportunity to create long-term economic value.

But the sheer scale and shape of the challenge can sometimes be hard to grasp. This is largely because a superficially simple problem – having enough quality homes for everyone to live in – has now morphed into a complex range of interlinked problems, which affect different people in different ways at different times.

In this paper, we try to provide a brief snapshot of the extent of UK’s housing challenge, with the help of 15 charts, covering:

• The gap between housing supply and demand

• The impact this has had on affordability and accessibility 

• Why this is a quality problem, not just a quantity problem

• Some of the key barriers to housebuilding

Situated in the Ealing Town Centre Conservation Area at the heart of Ealing’s vibrant and well-connected commercial and retail zone, the site will be transformed into new co-living homes plus shared amenity and ground floor retail.

This acquisition adds to HUB and Bridges’ growing pipeline of co-living projects, including Cornerstone and Assemblies in the City of London, Yardhouse in White City and Pines Way in Bath.

Currently a backland car park fronted by commercial units, the consented scheme will give the site a renewed purpose and bring it back into use. Designed to deliver high-quality homes whilst enhancing community integration with active street frontage, the development will also include a diverse range of internal and external communal spaces.

In line with HUB and Bridges’ commitment to creating homes that foster community cohesion, residents will benefit from shared amenities such as a communal kitchen, gym, cinema, co-working space, and sunken courtyards with biodiverse planting. The scheme also dedicates a generous portion of the site to public use, encouraging movement through the development.

Sustainability is at the core of the Sandringham Mews development.. The scheme is targeting a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating, with the potential to achieve ‘Outstanding’, exceeding current environmental planning requirements set by The London Plan and Ealing Council. In addition to being within walking distance of Ealing Broadway station, active travel will be supported with ample secure cycle storage.

Miles Keeley, Head of Acquisitions at HUB, commented: “Sandringham Mews marks another exciting acquisition for HUB and Bridges. Under consented plans, the scheme has enormous potential to reactivate this pocket of Ealing, complementing its existing commercial and retail spaces with high-quality homes that offer residents community, connectivity and an excellent lifestyle. This scheme continues HUB’s mission to transform underutilised and well-connected urban sites into living-led developments that enhance the area while meeting market demand for homes. It is an excellent example of co-living shaping sustainable and enriched neighbourhoods for the future.”

Simon Ringer, Head of Property Funds at Bridges, commented: “Co-living is an important part of the answer to the housing crisis in our major cities. With this Sandringham Mews development, we are taking an under-used site, in an area where there is a clear under-supply of housing, and transforming it into more than 300 sustainable homes – while also creating an asset that benefits the local community through new outdoor and retail space. We’re excited to see it come to life in the next few years.”

The comprehensive redevelopment of the Bath site will deliver a significant number of BTR and affordable homes, alongside commercial spaces and improved public realm, creating a new mixed-use asset for the city. Our proposals will respond to growing and unmet renter demand in Bath, a desirable high growth city with only four BTR schemes currently.

The scheme will offer waterside living, adjacent to the River Avon and several other new developments. Its prime location is just an 8-minute walk to central Bath, 17-minutes to Bath Spa station, and 13-minutes to Oldfield Park station.

A major focus for the scheme will be minimising environmental impact with a highly efficient energy strategy targeting EPC A, onsite renewables, and full whole life-cycle carbon assessment throughout the development process.

The increasing demand for high quality and professionally managed homes in Bath is due to its desirability and vibrancy, fed in part by an exceptional university, strong graduate retention, its proximity to Bristol and excellent transport connections to London.

Simon Ringer, Head of Bridges’ Property Funds, said:

“We know from our previous developments with HUB that there is a strong unmet demand for high-quality, sustainably built living space in our major cities. We are looking forward to bringing this vacant site in Bath back into use, and working with the local community to design attractive, sustainable homes – in line with Bridges’ continued focus on needs-driven opportunities where there is proven demand from both occupiers and investors for the future-proofed assets that we create.”

This is Bridges’ fourteenth deal in partnership with HUB, together on course to deliver over 4,000 homes across a number of living-led developments throughout the UK.

The deal is the twelfth for the pair and is the latest project as part of the ‘office to residential’ re-purposing strategy developed by HubCap, owned by HUB, alongside Bridges’ property funds platform. It follows on from the recent acquisition of 45 Beech Street for £30m, next to the Barbican estate, another workplace conversion project. HubCap currently has five projects under development between London and Edinburgh with a combined GDV of £330m. Bridges and Hub have worked on numerous ‘living’ sector deals together over the last decade with a combined development value of over £1bn.

150 Minories was chosen due to its prime position in the middle of a vibrant, evolving neighbourhood. There is an opportunity for the site to change use and positively contribute to this exciting location between the City and the bustling East End.

The scheme will add to HUB and Bridges’ successful track record of delivering well-designed, sustainable and community-led living schemes. Like the scheme at 45 Beech Street, this conversion will involve retaining the frame of the building and reinforcing its foundations, an approach which saves 30% embodied carbon compared to an equivalent new build.

Simon Ringer, Head of Bridges’ Property Funds, said:

“This acquisition continues our focus on needs-driven real estate sectors where there is growing occupational and investment demand. Over the last decade, we’ve developed thousands of highly sustainable lower-cost homes in areas where there is a clear shortage of quality housing. But as we think about the transition to Net Zero, it’s also important that we think about how we can reduce the embodied carbon involved in housebuilding. Clearly over the last few years there have been significant changes in the way we live and work, which has left a number of buildings in fantastic locations that are ripe for repurposing and refurbishment. So we’re delighted to complete this new investment in the Minories, which, like our Beech Street investment, will help to turn unwanted office space into beautifully-designed, sustainably-built homes.”

Miles Keeley, Principal at HubCap, said:

“There is a chronic need for more good quality, sustainable housing in the City of London, so that people can continue living and working there. 150 Minories will deliver up to 300 new homes to help meet this need. This part of Aldgate is poised for major revitalisation, and we look forward to playing our part through this transformative development. The back-to-back acquisitions of Minories and Beech Street highlight the scale of our ambitions to be a market leader in the re-purposing space, an area of the market that desperately needs to mature due to changes in the way occupiers use buildings, as well as the pressing need to save embodied carbon.”

“HubCap’s strategy is to identify sites suitable for conversion that will help to reanimate pockets of cities in need of an injection of life. Introducing a better mix of uses in city centres, especially more housing, is crucial for resurrecting local economies.”

The Bridges Property Funds have acquired a 12,069 sq. ft site in Ludgate Hill, in the City of London, at a very attractive entry price for such a prime City location. We’re investing alongside HubCap, a new HUB subsidiary that will focus on low-carbon, city centre co-living and aparthotel projects.

We’ll be applying for planning consent to retro-fit the current building – which is currently a partially vacant office – into a highly sustainable aparthotel, aimed at London’s sizeable short-stay tourist market.

“Globally, the existing building stock accounts for a huge proportion of carbon emissions,” says Simon Ringer, Partner and Head of the Bridges Property Funds. “So we’ve always been interested in finding ways to retro-fit under-used buildings to make them more sustainable and economically useful.

“Through our various projects together, Bridges and HUB are on course to deliver more than 3,000 lower-cost and affordable homes in London, Edinburgh and Leeds, with a total value of over £1bn. So we’re excited to be able to work together again on another exciting area of the residential market – short-stay living – in a way that we hope will allow us to draw on our long experience of sustainable development and low-carbon design.”

The £30m deal is our eleventh with HUB, and builds on our recent acquisition of another City of London site on Ludgate Hill. It’s an exciting move that will add to our successful track record of delivering well-designed, sustainable community-led residential schemes, following our recently consented project in Hammersmith and Fulham, in partnership with Women’s Pioneer Housing.

45 Beech Street sits within the overall Barbican masterplan, and is currently used as commercial office space. The redevelopment will allow the important character of the building to be preserved, whilst also saving significant amounts of embodied carbon. It will be developed by HUB subsidiary HubCap, with a community consultation on plans for the site to begin in the coming weeks.

Simon Ringer, Head of Property Funds at Bridges, said:
“London has a pressing need for more high-quality living space to house its growing population. Since 2014 we have partnered with HUB on a number of schemes that are on course to deliver more than 3,300 lower-cost and affordable homes with values of over £1 bn.

As part of our mission to help build a more sustainable and inclusive economy, we continue to explore new models with the potential to deliver high-quality housing while reducing carbon emissions. So we’re excited to be working again with HUB on this new Beech Street development: By investing our investors’ capital in needs-driven sectors like this, we are able to deliver our combined targets of strong financial returns for our investors alongside very positive social and environmental outcomes.”

Located by York Street and Frederick Street, the new student housing development will sit north of Belfast City Centre, on a site which previously housed retail and office buildings but is currently in a state of disrepair.

We’ve received planning permission to develop 307 bedrooms across eleven floors, enabling us to address the pressing demand for purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) in Belfast. The city is home to almost 38,500 students – but around 80% of this total do not have access to PBSA.

We’re aiming for the accommodation to be ready for students in time for the 2024/2025 academic year.

Guy Bowden, Partner at Bridges Fund Management, said: “Belfast is a big student city, but there’s a real lack of high-quality purpose-built student accommodation. Our new development in partnership with ROK will help to address this under-supply, building on Bridges’ extensive experience of delivering highly sustainable lower-cost residential accommodation in other major UK cities like Leeds, Edinburgh and London.”

Shaun Crawley at ROK Property added, “We are delighted to have partnered with Bridges Fund Management to deliver this high quality PBSA development in a prime location. The project, which is adjacent to the much-anticipated Ulster University Campus, will support the very significant demand for student accommodation in the city centre and ensure a positive future for this part of Belfast.  We look forward to seeing these exciting plans move forward later this year and anticipate welcoming students in 2024.”