A student accommodation block which has been left empty after construction stopped over a year ago is an "insult" to the community during Cornwall's housing crisis, says the councillor for the area.

Caledonian Modular stopped work on the £40m 'purple cube' in Penryn, known as Studytel, in March 2022 after it went into administration.

The company behind the huge building is Sondica, based on the Isle of Man, which contracted Caledonian Modular to build the £40m turnkey contract. Permission was granted for the 528-bed student accommodation block on Kernick Industrial Estate by Cornwall Council's planning department in 2018.

The site was due to open to students for the 2021/22 academic year. Concerned locals, many of whom have labelled it the 'Kernick Carbuncle', fear the building is falling into disrepair and are concerned that 300 mattresses, which were seen being delivered earlier this month, will rot inside.

A spokesperson for Sondica told us the company has no intention of walking away, is still heavily invested in the building project and work will start "imminently". However, Tamsyn Widdon, Cornwall councillor for Penryn, said that the company has been saying "imminently" for the past two years and is concerned the unfinished building could be sat deteriorating for the next ten years.

The Green Party councillor says she has received lots of complaints from people locally about the empty building. "You can see it from the school and houses – it's not just the visual impact, it's more the insult that there's a housing crisis and this has just been abandoned.

"This is a really visual example of what's wrong with our housing market and regulation system. It shouldn't be the case that they're just allowed to abandon it for this amount of time. Through Cornwall Council there is no financial leverage that we can use to force them to even clear off the community field that we've lost, as there's gravel on it now."

Nearby residents have previously complained that a football field alongside the 'purple cube', which was in frequent use by children and dog walkers, is now left as a builder's yard with no hope of the locals using it again.

Cllr Widdon added: "There's absolutely nothing Cornwall Council can do. I've pushed and pushed and they won't even escalate it to the ombudsman because within the rules of housing development and planning laws, once the developer has that planning permission they've got all the time in the world to do what they want with it, unless they do something illegal. That could be sitting there like that for ten years.

"This is a political choice, to allow money to be made from development with nothing to penalise people who don't act in the benefit of the community."

The councillor said she has been continually pushing for more details of when the building will be completed and students finally move in. "A statement came back from Sondica via the enforcement team at the council that change was imminent, but that 'imminent' has been two years," she said.

A spokesperson for Sondica / Studytel said the situation has remained complex following the construction company going bust, but stresses it is doing all it can to get the project moving again.

They said: "We had a contractor that went into administration some time ago. You will appreciate these things are very difficult, there's a lot of legalities involved. We are going to resume the scheme, but there are a lot of moving parts to this.

"As frustrating as it is for the local community – if they see no progress, they think it's gone to rack and ruin, but far from it – work will start imminently. The last thing we want is for the building to still look like that in a year's time. We remain invested and we are investing more money into Cornwall. We're not walking away from it; we're spending significant sums of money to make sure that once we get mobilised we have a clear runway."

The company said it realised there is a lot of comment in the area about the building with local fears it is falling into disrepair.

The spokesperson said: "There was all sorts of innuendo that we were going to have refugees in there and I've heard the building's 'falling down'. Short of Elon Musk setting a rocket off there, we've heard every variation of plausible and non-plausible story. That's just noise for us and it gets in the way of getting mobilised so we can get a restart. The reality is it's a very complex situation. We are working tirelessly to get the scheme restarted. The contractors left a legacy of issues we are now working through and resolving.

"Ultimately it's going to be providing student accommodation so the quality is paramount. What we didn't want to do is jump back in, continue the work and find legacy problems later. We've got a global forensic engineering team going through and giving it a bill of health on the work that's been done and advising on the work that needs to be done, so when we get going in earnest, which we will be doing imminently, we don't suddenly unravel things we didn't find out."

They said the 300 mattresses which were observed being delivered a couple of weeks ago were being stored safely.

The building – which is currently unclad – is famous for being purple, which is actually temporary weather defence material. It is surrounded by fencing and security boards, much of which has been covered in graffiti, including phrases such as "I love the purple cube" and "Love is a thing easy to rot".

The development on Parkengue Road is due to include a mix of self-contained studios and cluster apartments with shared kitchens and communal spaces. Along with the accommodation facilities, the scheme is supposed to feature a Winter Garden Library with shared working space for both students and business start-ups.