More than 1,000 new student bedrooms in four multi-storey blocks are to be created once a 'difficult to let' office complex has been demolished.

The majority of the premises at Mercia Business Village, in Torwood Close, near Warwick University, are either vacant or on short-term lets. The owners of many of those properties have backed the plan, which the developer says will create 450 construction and supply jobs.

But not everyone was in favour of the scheme when it came before Coventry City Council's planning committee. A spokesman from the Coventry Society quoted from a report which said there was a surplus of student places elsewhere in the city.

Developer Simon Murray-Twinn of Skybridge Properties explained to the meeting that the price of upgrading the offices, which were built in

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