About us
We are a group of local residents that are becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of the expansion of Royal Holloway upon our community.
Since the inception of Royal Holloway’s ‘Masterplan’ we have seen an unprecedented increase in Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in both Egham and Englefield Green with a corresponding decrease in homes available to families.
As more students live in the community, we have seen an increase in antisocial-behaviour (ASB) from the small, but significant, percentage of those students that are inconsiderate of others and in some streets – during term time – parking has become almost impossible as students, college staff and residents compete for parking spaces.
Although the college currently has over 11,000 registered students it plans to increase that number further to 15,000 by 2030 and so the problems that we experience now are unlikely to get any better.
It is clear to many that the problems experienced by residents are due almost entirely to Royal Holloway’s policy of unsustainable expansion in an environment that is far too small to accommodate its aims. Many predicted the problems that we see today and yet the college pressed on regardless and simply pushed the problems associated with inadequate accommodation and inadequate parking into the community.
We believe that the college should acknowledge the problems caused to residents and take more responsibility for addressing them.
This website aspires to be a definitive source of information for residents affected by these issues, or simply interested in them for the sake of the community: how did they arise, how to report incidents and what long-term measures can be taken.
We recognise that there may be other issues affecting some, or all, of us but we do not intend to address those here: we are committing our resources to just this one subject as it is probably the single biggest local issue impacting so many lives in both Egham and Englefield Green. For those other concerns, we already have two very good residents’ associations: the Englefield Green Village Residents’ Association and the Egham Residents’ Association and we whole-heartedly recommend these to you.