Post 14 – The Power Of Facebook

I regret to inform you that I think we are pretty much alone when it comes to councillors’ support in tackling student ASB….

I did not hear back from any of the councillors to the email dated 14th November other than Andrea who was in support of the points raised. (See Post 13.)

I lie; Nick Prescott did reply, sending two emails. The first, advising that he had the flu for the councillors’ surgery and that was why he could not attend. The second, a one liner asking if I had seen a RHUL webpage on how to report community concerns. Not really what I was expecting.

I subsequently followed up with a couple of emails to all the councillors: one on 16th Nov asking how the RHUL meeting went, and another, more sarcastic one on 19th Nov highlighting a post and comments that was shared on the Facebook Group, ‘Englefield Greenies’ about a problematic student HMO. None of the councillors replied to these follow ups either. I am not sure as to Nick Prescott’s influence over the other Conservative councillors but I am pretty sure he has muzzled them. (I have shared the whole email thread below including Nick’s Link.)

I am not sure as to why the councillors are so opposed to dealing with the matter, especially when many of their constituents’ are at the end of their tethers. (I am determined to find out what is really going on here and establish their agendas.) I thought the screen grabs from Englefield Greenies succinctly highlighted many aspects of the problem. And here, I am in fact amazed that the councillors are willfully turning a blind eye.

Perhaps naming and shaming problematic student HMOs is indeed the answer? I thought the comment I have marked in red was very well informed, albeit a little too understanding of noisy neighbours perhaps. RHUL textbook. And I could empathise with some of the other suggestions further down but not sure these would meet with the approval of the students concerned, RHUL or indeed most onlookers – well maybe possibly our councillors.

I really do think RHUL should be made aware of the seriousness of the problem: and I am prepared to argue now that all but one of our councillors’ are acting irresponsibly. At least the Englefield Greenies’ Admins could/ can see how febrile the situation was/ is and turned the commenting off.

What to do next?

I have Andrea’s version of events of Tues 15th Nov meeting which I will share with you in the next post – let’s just say it isn’t great.

If the councillors will not voice our concerns, and in light of there being no public meeting to raise this matter with RHUL ourselves, what should we do? The plan is still to try to get the attention of Julie Sanders but if this fails what is Plan B?

Best

A Gnat

Copy Of Correspondence Between A Gnat & Councillors

From A Gnat to All Cllrs, 14th Nov 2022, 2057.

See copy of email in  Post 13.

From Nick Prescott to A Gnat, 14th Nov 2022, 2100.

Thanks for the email. I had the flu and that’s why I didn’t attend. However, I will be at the RHUL meeting tomorrow.

I did email all the other councillors that I wasn’t going to be attending.

Kind Regards,

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From Nick Prescott to A Gnat, 14th Nov 2022, 2150.

Just a quick one….have you seen this FAQ before?

https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/students/assets/docs/pdf/reporting-comm-concerns-sep-2019.pdf

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From A Gnat to All Cllrs, 16th Nov 2022, 1722.

Hi Nick

Apologies for the lag in getting back to you.

Thanks for link. Yes, I have seen a version of this before. You subsequently may be interested in the results of a mini survey I carried out last year:

‘Of the 12 households that took part in a mini survey, all reported that they had been significantly disturbed by student ASB. 50% said that they had reported ASB to RHUL while 25% did not know how to report ASB. Of the 50% that had reported a complaint to RHUL, 50% found that the action taken to resolve their complaint was ineffective. Another notable observation was that 50% had stopped reporting ASB as they felt doing so was a waste of time.’

Pretty worrying if you extrapolate that sample group out, don’t you agree?

Further to my email, we don’t agree with this point in the document:

‘If you have evidence the concern involved students from Royal Holloway, please also report it to their Community Wellbeing team. They can be contacted by email at community@royalholloway.ac.uk’

Reporting needs to be easy for the resident. More so, it needs to be efficient for the person managing the student ASB; the current system is grossly inefficient. As mentioned, we believe RHUL should be responsible for the conduct of their students, not the taxpayer. Do you think RHUL should be responsible for the members of their organisation?

How did the meeting go yesterday? Were you able to put forward any of the points raised in my email?

Hope your recovery is going well,

Best regards,

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From A Gnat, 19th Nov 2022, 1047

Hi Cllrs

Just a quick one…did you see this post & comments in Englefield Greenies last week?

‘See Englefield Greenies Screen grabs’ **See group Media**

Hopefully you might be up for meeting me soon?

Best wishes,