Where have all our family homes gone?

When Royal Holloway submitted its planning application to RBC in 2014, it’s proposal included the construction of c2,650 student bed spaces.  To date, it has built just 621 in what is now George Eliot Halls.

When Royal Holloway submitted its plan for Rusham Park it was given permission in February 2022 to build a ‘Student Village’ with 1,400 student beds.  Further, prior to submitting its application, Royal Holloway informed the community and other stake holders that its plan was to relocate the 400+ beds in Kingswood Halls (at the end of Coopers Hill) to Rusham Park.  This meant that the net contribution to student accommodation wouldn’t be 1,400 new beds but less than 1,000.  To date though, the number of beds delivered at Rusham Park is zero: the site stands levelled with just a moth-balled multi-storey car park, a lake and a £3.3 mm demolition bill for the university.

According to Royal Holloway’s website, it has considered ‘the complexity of the construction funding market’ and taken the decision not to proceed with its development plans in their current form.  Meanwhile though, it quietly closed Kingswood Halls with the loss of some 420 beds.  So, the net delivery of new student accommodation under the Masterplan’s proposal for 2,650 beds is closer to just 200.

So with the large increase in student numbers driven by Royal Holloway’s expansion, where has the necessary accommodation come from?  Through the conversion of family homes and sites in the community into student accommodation, that’s where.

While Royal Holloway’s plans for accommodation were coming to virtually nothing, private landlords were taking the opportunity to capitalise on the university’s expansion by buying up family homes and converting them to HMOs.  At the same time, larger property developers bought up sites in the neighbourhood and built blocks of PBSA (Purpose Built Student Accommodation) in what many would argue were inappropriate developments.

RBC published a report on HMOs in the area in November 2022 and, as the graph below shows, it demonstrated that the numbers of HMOs in Egham and Englefield Green were vastly higher than any other ward in the borough.  RBC speculated – unsurprisingly – that this was a result of private rented student accommodation for those studying at Royal Holloway which had seen ‘continuous growth over recent years’

Nearly every HMO in those numbers represents a family home that has been bought and converted into student accommodation.  And it isn’t just the prevalence of issues such as excess waste; unkempt gardens and properties; forests of almost permanent ‘To Let’ signs and anti-social behaviour that we experience at HMOs: the cumulative conversion of these properties has resulted in a slow, insidious change to the local demographics with families and low-income households becoming excluded from the local housing market and schools becoming economically unviable.

Royal Holloway bought Rusham Park for £20.4 mm, spent £3.3 mm on demolition, wrote down the value of its ‘investment’ by £5.1 mm and has been left with a levelled site.  Meanwhile, the community has lost hundreds of family homes which has changed the character of the local community – probably for ever.

Royal Holloway: Is this another fine mess you’ve got us in to?