How Royal Holloway’s Management Affects our Community

When Royal Holloway was first established in the nineteenth century it was a college for just 600 women but grew steadily as it became a constituent of the University of London in 1900 and then merged with Bedford College in1985.  By 2000 the total number of students was just under 6,000 but in 2014 the senior Management Team embarked on a ‘Masterplan’ to increase the number of students to 12,000!  However, although it planned on building more student accommodation in George Eliot Halls, the college has always prioritised its accommodation for first year students and hadn’t planned on providing sufficient accommodation for students in their second and third years and this is where the problems began.

As you may have already noticed, Egham and Englefield Green are small residential communities with a combined population of about 26,000 residents.   As the need for student accommodation grew though, many private landlords saw the financial attraction of buying up houses intended for family use and turning them into student accommodation – Houses in Multiple Occupation or HMOs.  This, in turn, has noticeably changed the character of many of the streets of this small community and, unfortunately, most of these changes have been detrimental to the community as a whole.

The influx of a disproportionate number of students has also resulted in many families being affected by the anti-social behaviour (ASB) of a small, but significant, number of students living in the community and also the chronic parking problems created as many students, university staff and visitors compete for parking spaces in the residential streets surrounding the campus.

Many of these problems were foreseen by residents when Royal Holloway consulted on its plans in 2014 but the concerns were largely ignored.

As student numbers grew and the anticipated problems materialised, the Royal Holloway Community Liaison Forum meetings were dominated by angry residents complaining about the behaviour of some of the students living in the community.  The Royal Holloway management team responded by cancelling all further meetings – a position that it maintains to this day.

Problems associated with students living in the community have been recognized by both Surrey Police and Runnymede Borough Council for many years now.  In 2009, Surrey Police’s local news letter included an article on how it was addressing the issues of noise noise and anti-social behaviour (ASB) but the transitory nature of student populations has made it difficult to implement any effective long-term solutions  

In a presentation to the Runnymede Crime and Disorder Committee of Runnymede Borough Council in March 2022, Surrey Police’s Borough Commander demonstrated that student ASB around Royal Holloway was an ‘ASB Hotspot’.

Although the vast majority of students are well behaved, the lives of many residents were blighted when they have found themselves living next door to an HMO occupied by students determined to ‘have a good time’ and there are many anecdotes of altercations between student and resident predicated by the sheer frustration of having their lives chronically disturbed – particularly at night.

Anti-social behaviour is not the only symptom of large numbers of students living in the community though.  In response to the growing concerns of residents and councillors alike, Runnymede Borough Council published a report in November 2022 on the evidence surrounding HMOs in the borough to see if there was  sufficient evidence to introduce an ‘Article 4 Direction’ which could help limit any further proliferation.  The report highlights the disproportionate numbers of HMOs in Egham and Englefield Green and lists the potential impacts of student HMOs which include:

  • Increase in population densities resulting in increases in domestic refuse, litter (e.g. fast food and pizza boxes) and fly-tipping of unwanted household items (e.g. discarded beds/mattresses, sofas and fridges);
  • The removal of hedges, fences, gates, and gardens for driveways;
  • The proliferation of ‘to-let’ boards, unkempt gardens and yards;
  • Dilapidated external residential facades and the disrepair of housing (depending on the landlord);
  • The exclusion of local families and low-income individuals and households from the local housing market;
  • The replacement / displacement of local families by transient student populations;
  • The marginalisation and polarisation of local families;
  • The gradual closure of local crèches, nurseries and schools, and other community facilities;
  • The loss of family-oriented public and private services;
  • Higher levels of burglary and crime;
  • The formation of a new sense of place, and a different type of ambience in the neighbourhood;
  • Room arrangements and a lifestyle which can exacerbate noise nuisance (e.g. parties, higher occupancy levels in HMO);
  • The conflicts between the everyday living routines (e.g. timing of work, play and sleep) of established residents and many students;
  • Increased car parking and congestion;
Student HMOs in the community

In the meantime, Royal Holloway sought to assuage the detrimental effects of its expansion on the local community by purchasing a piece of land on which it intended to build a ‘student village’.  The plans heralded 1,400 new bedrooms which could well have eased the pressure on the communities’ family housing stock.  The management team has failed to deliver on that hope though, for reasons that it describes as a ‘change in the financial landscape’ and the land now sits as a demolition site with an unused, 408 space, multi-story car park on it.

To make matters worse, Royal Holloway closed its facility at Kingswood Hall in Englefield Green with the loss of over 400 bedrooms and announced a new strategy of increasing student numbers by a ‘modest’, 25% to 15,000.

As resentment and problems remain in the community, Royal Holloway’s website maintains that its relationship with the community is important to it.

Really?

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