Post 4 of 10 – What is ASB?

ASB is behaviour by a person which causes distress to persons not of the same household as the person.

RHUL logs ASB into different categories: some of these include Noise Nuisance, Refuse & Recycling, Transient Noise, Parking or Vehicle use, Substance Abuse and Safety.

To expand on a couple of these:

Noise Nuisance is by far the most common ASB complaint received by RHUL; examples here may include parties, loud music/ TV/ Gaming etc

Transient Noise is a short lived noise. An example of this would be students walking between venues where they may be talking loudly/ shouting/ singing etc. Or entering or leaving a property/ doors slamming etc.

Examples:

Last academic year, we were disturbed regularly by after-parties (0330 starts) that took place on Wednesday and Saturdays (after the campus nightclub closed.) We were disturbed by both the noise from the party and the people that were coming and going. We were disturbed on one occasion by an early morning football game taking place in the road (0130). The pinnacle was probably the bin toppling – one of the student’s decided to topple the majority of the bins down our road on their way home from a night out.

(All of the above came from the same problematic HMO. Each occurrence was reported to RHUL and despite RHUL saying action had been taken on each occurrence, the problem only subsided once they vacated at the end of the year.)

Some other examples from friends and neighbours:

A resident whose house shares a wall with an HMO was regularly woken by a late night gamer.

A resident in his ground floor flat was regularly disturbed by his first floor neighbour’s late night pot smoking gatherings (trying to choose the right term for this is difficult, weed, gear, marijuana? I like pot) both by the people coming and going and also walking around.

A couple had to leave their bedroom and sleep in their living room each time their student neighbours had a party. (The parties were held at an HMO on the adjacent street.)

A resident could not go to work because a student car was blocking his driveway.

A resident had to live opposite an HMO whose front garden was semi-permanent storage for unwanted furniture/ household waste.

During the reporting phase of this campaign we would like you to report any student behaviour that significantly disturbs you. And I suppose the word ‘significantly’ is the key word – we all create noise and we need to differentiate what is acceptable and what is not. Having to close the window because of transient noise from the street in order to be able to sleep would be considered significant.

More information on how to report ASB will be shared next week. Of course, if you are already experiencing student ASB, you should report it now.

Please send an email to community@rhul.ac.uk and also copy in Andrea. His email address is cllr.andrea.berardi@runnymede.gov.uk (We would like to have a record of the complaint.)

It is now only two weeks until the start of the reporting phase of this campaign. If you have not done so already, please consider sharing the link with your friends & neighbours. By working together we will have the best chance of delivering meaningful change to the status quo.

I have inserted the previous posts below for the benefit of the new members that have joined this group.

Best,

A Gnat