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The days of dire student accommodation with several people crammed into a dilapidated bedroom with only one damp, mouldy bathroom serving an entire household seem to be thankfully coming to an end with the continued investment in UK purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA).
The growth of purpose-built student accommodation
According to Knight Frank UK, during 2025 approximately 19,600 new PBSA beds were delivered across 64 schemes, 20% more than in the previous year. A further 50,250 beds were under construction at the beginning of 2026. The substantial expansion of PBSA over the past decade has been driven by rising student numbers combined with shortages of suitable accommodation in many university cities. It also reflects changing expectations, with students increasingly looking for professionally managed, energy-efficient accommodation that provides secure, comfortable spaces in which to live and study.
Creating healthier places to live and study
As with all new builds that are required to be energy efficient, with a high degree of air tightness, PBSA requires effective ventilation to remove moisture, odours and airborne pollutants while supplying a continuous flow of fresh, filtered air.
But in PBSA properties, where students are not only living but also studying, ventilation is all the more important. A systematic evidence review by University College London found that increasing ventilation rates from 5 to 15 litres per second per person was associated with a 7% improvement in students’ academic performance. The review also identified evidence associating low ventilation rates and higher CO₂ concentrations with impaired attention, concentration loss and tiredness.
Delivering ventilation in Coventry
Coventry is home to two of the region’s leading universities and has one of the largest PBSA development pipelines outside London. At the start of 2026, 3,600 PBSA beds were under construction in Coventry.
Domus Ventilation has supplied an extensive mechanical ventilation solution for one of these major new PBSA developments in Coventry. The scheme provides approximately 1,000 student bedrooms across a multi-building development. Designed to provide modern, high-quality accommodation, the development also incorporates communal facilities and landscaped amenity spaces.
A total of 496 Domus HRX-aQ AQH200-B mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) units have been installed to serve the development’s individual studio apartments. Acoustic attenuation has also been incorporated throughout the ventilation systems to help minimise the transfer of noise and maintain a comfortable internal environment.
The Domus HRX-aQ range provides balanced supply and extract ventilation while recovering heat from outgoing stale air and transferring it to the incoming fresh air. This reduces the amount of heat that would otherwise be lost through ventilation, helping to combine good indoor air quality with energy-efficient building operation.
Suitable for apartments of up to 80m², the compact AQH200-B can serve a kitchen and up to two wet rooms. It offers heat recovery efficiency of up to 87%, with a Specific Fan Power as low as 0.66 W/(l/s).
By combining efficient heat recovery, continuous ventilation and acoustic performance, the Domus solution is helping to create comfortable, energy-conscious accommodation in which students can live, rest and study.
