Royal College of Surgeons students newly arrived from abroad and looking for digs may be casting admiring glances across the road from the college at the new block of apartments nearing completion on York Street.

It looks as though it might have been designed for the college as suitable accommodation for would-be docs, but in fact the spanking new block is social housing, designed to replace a block of flats demolished by the council some years ago to a certain amount of hue and cry, because the flats looked like quaint Victorian tenements but had in fact been built in the 1950s. The block, designed by Seán Harrington Architects, will house 66 families, most of whom lived in the old flats. They will move in this autumn. Meanwhile the council is so pleased with the design that it plans to open two show units in the development – to show others how it should be done. Watch this space for opening times.

Meanwhile college of surgeons students will have to look elsewhere. Mind you, they are firm favourites around the corner in the Adelaide Square apartment complex, carved out of the old Adelaide Hospital, which has more medical tenants per floor than any other scheme in town.