Post 50 – 03/03/24 – Miracle Occurs in Egham & Englefield Green: Student ASB Stops And Is No Longer A Problem – Part 1 (5 Minute Read)

If true, how can this be explained? What is going on?

Some hypotheses:

1. ‘RHUL’s Be A Good Neighbour Guide is working.’

This year’s campaign may have been a huge success. Tracy did say in her email to us that the new video had 12,000 viewings between 7th Sept and 11th October 2023. (That is a significant increase – last year’s video attracted about 50 viewings in the whole year if I recall well.) And this would mean that on average every undergraduate student has watched the video at least once. Possible yes, plausible, possibly not.

2. ‘Rumours That Local Residents Have Had Enough & Vigilante Groups Will Break Up Students Parties Has Put Students On Watch’

Again possible but like the above we think unlikely. Yes there may be some talk amongst the student community about the locals having enough but we are not convinced that it would have led to a significant change in behaviour. 

3. ‘Reporting Fatigue’

Are residents fed up with reporting student ASB? Well I think we all know the answer here – for sure we are – I for one have to cajole myself to send in reports nowadays.

Reporting can be a monumental faff especially if you undertake the route that the authorities would like you to take. Unless you are very au fait with reporting or use the WNTT templates for ease, navigating the system is arduous and time consuming (see below). 

And then, after reporting the incident, the victim often finds that no meaningful action has been taken, further disenfranchising residents from the systems that have been put in place to support them.

4. ‘Convoluted Reporting Procedures’

Following serious ASB incidents in Egham in early February, the Egham Councillors and the ERA distributed advice on how to report ASB to some households. (See Attached.)

The guide promoted all the different reporting channels in one place so that the resident had a go to document to help navigate the systems for future ASB occurrences.

Consolidating all the procedures in one place does highlight how convoluted the authorities have made reporting – joined up it is not. The current system requires residents to triage the incident before reporting it. But unfortunately ASB often does not always fit neatly into a single category. For example, a noisy house party that spills into the street – how should you report that? This we believe is a significant hurdle with many people choosing not to report at all.

–

We wish that the headline for this post was true. The reality though is that student ASB probably remains at the same level as last year (and indeed the year before that and the year before that for that matter) as none of the underlying factors have significantly changed. 

Until a central reporting point is devised by the authorities in order to make reporting easier for residents ALONG WITH them taking meaningful steps to find resolutions for the victims, we feel that the actual scale of the problem will continue to remain camouflaged. And this of course will continue to suit RHUL nicely.

It feels a bit regressive having to visit this topic again; I do put my head in my hands at times. 

To the local community decision makers (past and present) that read these posts: meeting 3 times a year with RHUL to look at the short term numbers in my eyes does not really constitute managing a problem. That is more of a tick box exercise with the main beneficiary being RHUL who then markets itself as working closely with the community. If you want to manage the problem you need to know what the problems are, you need to understand the scale of the problem, you need to understand what the root cause of the problem is and then if you believe that there is a problem (which there is) you ought to put in measures to mitigate them. No wonder the local community has had enough – it’s been groundhog day for at least the last 17 years. So the news that you have been able to put in place a new meeting with RHUL that goes beyond the tickboxing is much welcomed and we congratulate you for starting the process of change.

In tomorrow’s post, we will look at RHUL’s current accommodation strategy and why we think they would like the status quo maintained. 

Best wishes,

We Need To Take Direct Action Against Royal Holloway

PS We are going to start reporting stories in this newsfeed group soon. If you have a story relating to the handling of RHUL student related issues, good or bad, we would like to hear from you.

Please send an email to enquiries@weneedtotalkaboutroyalholloway.com with a brief outline and someone will get back to you.