No pitchforks...yet

As many will know, I rarely write about work related issues on here. It's probably generally a good idea not to associate one's employer with my diverse and eclectic other opinions. And, since I am also a governor of the university, I don't want to put myself in the position of making any indiscretions, perhaps where I am in receipt of privileged information.

However tonight's an exception. And be warned, that this post is going to be a real monster - for which I make no apology.

Last week a planning application for a key part of Oxford Brookes University's redevelopment of its campus at Gipsy Lane in Oxford was refused, having been "called in" to full council after it had been approved by the City Council's Strategic Development Control Committee on the recommendation of planning officers. Coincidentally (or not, as one actually suspects) news went round of a meeting of local residents' groups in East Oxford and the Headington area which, in its own publicity was:

"intended to be constructive by bringing together the communities from Headington and East Oxford ,their elected representatives and Brookes University and start a community debate about ways how to restrain the presence of Brookes University in East Oxford."

Well, with such a neutral (not!) intention (I understand that university management were not, in fact, specifically invited, which itself does not bode well for "constructive" debate) this was clearly an event not to be missed, even if I was only going to sit and listen. Now, one would not characterize the meeting as "heated" since most of the people there were of a similar opinion - that Brookes has to be "restrained" in the area, and those of us not of that opinion seemed collectively to decide that discretion was the better part and so on...

But the main impression I got was that, whilst there were some good arguments, quite a lot of the people with the most to say were not, shall we say, in quite the fullest possession of the facts. That is not entirely their fault in many cases (though I suspect some of invincible ignorance because I've heard them previously) - the university cannot always disclose information that might be commercially sensitive to a public audience, and some aspects, such as "what constitutes a student" in counting student numbers, are and have always been, open to some interpretation - a former registrar at the university would always say, if someone asked him "how many students do we have", "well, it depends what you call a student" and indeed, with Brookes in particular with its many modes of delivery through partnerships and so on, it is a tricky question.

But I will try and address the issues I remember from the meeting as best I can, and without disclosing any confidentialities, because this is crucial to countering the campaigners' initial contention - that Brookes needs to be "restrained".

So first, student numbers. One speaker produced figures that purported to show that Oxford University has about 11,000 students and Oxford Brookes around 18,000. He stated that these were taken from publicly available sources. And indeed they are, however it was completely disingenuous of him to make a comparison between those two figures. Brookes does have just over 18,000 students enrolled. But this figure includes everyone - postgraduates, people studying for Brookes qualifications overseas or at partner colleges, part time students, people away in any one year on year out "sandwich" courses, mature students living at home and so on. The equivalent figure for Oxford University is just over 20,000 (pdf).

Brookes has in fact, just over 12,500 full time higher education students enrolled (at all levels, and including "sandwich" courses whose students will be away from Oxford for a year in their course) compared to Oxford's nearly 19,000. Of these 12,500 full time HE students, some 7,000 are based at campuses within the city with the remainder based at other campuses or at partner colleges some way from Oxford. Of these totals, some 3,700 are accommodated in halls of residence or a few (this point was raised, and overplayed I feel) leased houses - 3,500 or so really are in halls, not houses; about the same again, 3,700 and some, live at the family home; leaving a total of 4,700 and change who do not live either at home nor in university accommodation, and 1,300 or so of these live outside Oxford. So just over 3,400 occupy what might otherwise be "family homes" within Oxford of those who "do not pay council tax" (i.e. full-time students): just over 2% of the city's term time population and just under 3% of its non-student population.

Now, it is true, as Green councillor Craig Simmons pointed out that this 3,400 is a higher number than either the university would like, and more importantly than what the university had agreed to get the number down to by this year. However we do have another 400 student rooms in halls of residence coming onstream within the next 18 months, with another 370 or so expected shortly after provided within the city by a private provider. On top of that Brookes themselves are redeveloping both Harcourt and, if planning permission is forthcoming, Wheatley to a higher capacity still. 3,400 is, however, lower than the number in private accommodation when the agreement with the City Council was made in the Local Plan process seven years ago, and, contrary to one claim in the meeting, we have increased halls provision by over 800 bedrooms since that agreement.

So, first conclusion: even if there has been a small increase in the overall number of students, the number "living out" within the city has still fallen in absolute terms, and will continue to do so as new halls come onstream, whatever the perception amongst the local communities.

Second, the "New Student Centre Building" in context. Whilst it was ostensibly the planning application for a new building on the site of a previous very tatty 1950s building at the Gipsy Lane campus that sparked this more general outcry at "Brookes's expansion" and the need to "restrain" the university, it was markedly absent from much of the discussion at the meeting. One might, from the inside perspective, suggest that this is because the arguments are in fact inconvenient for the "anti-Brookes" campaign.

Yes, it is a big building. But it does not mark an expansion in the overall floor space at Gipsy Lane - which was one of the grounds for Green councillors at least trying to prevent it getting planning consent. The widely consulted upon "Master Plan", approved by the City Council over a year ago now, makes it quite clear that this building is the key to reducing overall the floor space and the number of buildings on the Gipsy Lane site. At the moment, because of the age and history of some of the buildings, they are actually pretty badly utilized - in terms of how much of the time any particular room or building is in use for education. The provision of this new building, designed with much more flexible spaces, and more suitable for contemporary teaching and learning activities means that at the end of the Master Plan process, there will in fact be a net reduction of over 30% of built floor space on the Gipsy Lane campus compared with what is there now (i.e. after the loss of the 50s engineering building).

So, second conclusion: setting aside issues of design and neighbourliness, which, yes, are important, especially if you live immediately adjacent to it, on the issue which concerns the agitated community groups most - the perception of an ever expanding university - the present application represents not an expansion, but in fact phase one of an overall reduction in built space. This does not, I believe, give them an argument for refusal of the planning application on the grounds of not having met targets about the number of students "living out".

Now, third, and to my mind the most important issue here, and one in which I think we are in complete agreement, concerns where in Oxford those "living out" students actually live, and what effect they may have on those particular neighbourhoods and how best to mitigate those effects. Yes, it can be clearly seen that those who live out prefer to live out as close as they can to first, the main campuses and second, the parts of Oxford in which they want to spend the rest of their time - socializing, spending money in the local economy (estimates range up to £100 million on top of what the university itself contributes to the local economy) and so on.

What one can reasonably say is that, notwithstanding that the overall number living out is falling, they are getting, apparently inexorably, more concentrated in certain neighbourhoods - in particular within an overall area bounded by about Howard Street in the south-west, St Clement's in the west, Headley Way and the "New Marston" area in the north and parts of Headington in the east. And along with that concentration of where they live, goes all the changes that local communities are concerned about in regard to the "Inner" Cowley Rd in terms of the mix of businesses, concentration of nightlife that causes disturbances and so on.

Now, on this issue, I think it is worth emphasizing one crucial fact: family homes become HMOs and student lets only when an owner occupier decides to sell to someone who is going to rent the property out. It may be true that students are prepared to pay a premium for proximity to their places of study and socializing, but you cannot actually blame the university for the fact that householders in these areas have apparently been all too willing to surrender family homes, presumably at top whack prices, to landlords who have spotted and want to exploit this trend in the market. Such is the nature of the land and property market, whether the demand is from students, or a particular ethnic community, or proximity to a particular employer.

I also think this is key to achieving some of the concerned neighbours' wishes too. Instead of calling for the heavy hand of government to step in and create some arbitrary rules for avoiding what the community is calling, rather unkindly in my opinion, "student ghettoes", there is a perfectly good, voluntary mechanism for putting a stop to any further "studentification" and eventually clawing back some of the property for family owner-occupier use. And in particular, it is a mechanism that will test the real resolve of those communities to do something about it themselves, and demonstrate whether the campaigners are, in fact, representative of the more general opinion in their areas.

My proposal: these campaigners should approach every owner-occupier in their areas and ask them voluntarily to sign up to a restrictive covenant on their home such that they will not sell up to someone intending to rent the property out as a multi-occupancy or student let. If everyone does so, then it is a sure demonstration that the campaigners are representative, and that their own neighbours are willing to help, effectively financially (by foregoing any possible premium they may get from a prospective landlord over another owner-occupier), stop any further encroachment. If they are not willing to accept such a restriction, one can only conclude that, when it comes down to it, that local community favours that price premium over maintaining their community. In such a situation, why on earth should an unrepresentative minority then be able to call upon the heavy hand of government coercion to do the same thing by force or planning regulation? If new halls do release family-homes back into the owner-occupancy market, they to should be encouraged to adopt the covenant and so help those neighbourhoods claw back some of the lost ground.

But this also goes hand in hand with assisting the university itself to help them, by providing purpose built accommodation in areas where students will find it more attractive to choose halls than to choose private lets. There is much debate about this issue - will students ever be tempted into halls rather than the perceived "benefits" of living out? Here we do have a problem of image in Oxford. Because of the history of Brookes all its current halls of residence were built in order first and foremost to accommodate the first year students. We cannot actually demonstrate that halls can be more attractive than private housing for continuing year students because we do not, effectively, have any halls that offer the equivalent type of accommodation.

"First year halls" are geared around people who arrive for the first time, not knowing the city probably, and almost certainly not knowing enough others to decide on their own groups with whom to share accommodation. Rooms are licensed to individuals bundled together in "cluster flats" that preserve enough privacy for individuals who do not know each other, and more rules to make such ad hoc groups function in as civilized a way as possible.

Further halls developed with the aim of enticing continuing year students out of family housing therefore need to be geared to that market: they need to be in the right location so that they are at least as convenient as the private lets with which they are competing; they need to offer a better standard of accommodation; they need to be more directed at groups who have formed a circle of friends and who want to club together and share a flat or house as a quasi-household; and they need to be in sufficient quantity to enable them to compete on price with private lets, allowing for any difference in quality.

And, for those who remain skeptical I can tell you now that I have yet to visit a private let student house that offers as good a standard of accommodation as properly maintained halls of residence. Family homes were not built that way - someone will get a pokey little room, others the en-suite bathroom, some will share a tiny little communal space because a landlord has decided to fit as many bedrooms in as possible, and so on.

Our newest halls of residence are being built at densities in excess of 300 bedspaces per hectare, and yet each bed-sitting room is around 15 sq m (the minimum acceptable for letting purposes in a private house is just 6 sq m) with its own en-suite facilities, and all the little things like sufficient power sockets, TV, phone and internet points in every room, well maintained, if "institutional", furniture, enough communal space such that everyone in the flat can have a place at the same dining table, cupboards and fridge space to keep their own things in and so on. Many halls providers in the private sector now provide facilities such as gyms and even swimming pools to make them more attractive. And in those university towns and cities where they do have a higher number of hall spaces available, whether university provided or by the recently burgeoning commercial providers, they do not seem to have a problem filling them - else it would not be such a lucrative business to be in.

By contrast, I have seen some truly shocking private lets, they are at a density usually way below half of what we can fit in halls - basically landlords can get away with treating their student tenants like something out of the Young Ones - especially perhaps those in truly "family sized" homes which are unlikely to fall under any of the registration and inspection schemes any time soon.

But the real upshot is that if we can build sufficient halls, close into the main campuses and socializing areas of town, for every hectare's worth of halls, we can reduce the land used by student private lets by two or three times that amount. So it's no use everyone moaning about "studentification" of family housing neighbourhoods whilst at the same time selling to those very landlords they don't want to see, and most importantly, whilst trying to prevent, as far as possible, planning for the halls of residence that could and should replace the need for the use of those family homes.

I've gone on far too long here. But I want to address a couple of specific points that were raised at the meeting:

First, several times someone (with whom I have had a most unpleasant brush previously over a Brookes development in which she quite wrongly assumed I was merely a Brookes shill when on the Planning Committee) said that Brookes wanted to get rid of some of its halls - specifically mentioning Crescent Hall and Paul Kent Hall. The only reference to this the university has made is in its submission to the Core Strategy examination in public. And it is quite clear - impossible to misinterpret other than willfully. These halls are, de facto, further away from the campuses and socializing facilities than most students would, everything else being equal, prefer to live. They are therefore not contributing to any possible effect of getting students out of family homes more conveniently located. All the university has said is that if it can be allocated sufficient land in more attractive locations such that it could build as many bedspaces as in these two other halls, as well as its overall aim to have net more halls spaces, then it would be better to build in those better locations and release those sites into the market for mainstream housing land.

There is not now, never has been, and will not be any intention to reduce the overall number of hall spaces available to Brookes students by disposing of those two halls. It is simply a recognition of the facts of the property market and the desire of students to live closer to where they want to be,

Second, on disciplinary issues and taking some responsibility for inculcating a more communitarian spirit in our students, especially those who live out. Someone said that the university does not do anything to help turn what I think they called eighteen year old tear-aways, newly independent, away from home, wanting only to please themselves, into potentially good neighbours. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst I am sure there is more the university could do to make it easier, for example, for concerned neighbours to see that something is done about egregious cases of un-neighbourliness, the whole pastoral and disciplinary effort in halls in their first year is directed at trying to get our students to have consideration for others' needs.

We are assisted also in this by the police - my three local beat officers were in fact onsite when I returned from the meeting last night getting ready to go on rounds with the wardens to start that very process with this year's new intake to halls. This is the second year now of an initiative begun by our local neighbourhood officers and now spreading as good practice to university communities throughout the Thames Valley Police area.

The city council also assists - for example by helping us tailor our recycling system in halls so that it matches as much as possible what students living out will be expected to do. Again, this has only really been fully online for two years now, so should only really now be feeding through to those now living out. Hopefully neighbours will see some improvement.

And lastly - bravo if you have read this far - cars. Cars are big lumps of metal. They take up a lot of space, whether they are owned by students or other residents. With students in halls we can police the city's conditions that students do not bring or use a car in Oxford.

Now I know that neighbourhoods perceive this to be a big problem - that a student house could have four or more cars for example. That they notice when students are back because parking becomes impossible. But it is a simple fact: it is only a minority of students who can actually afford to keep a car. You only need one car per house in much of east Oxford to overload the available on-street parking. If so many of these student houses, as is implied, actually had a car per resident, the problem would be far, far greater than it is.

Many people want the university to make it a condition of study that students do not have a car in Oxford, whether or not they are in halls. I cannot concur with that. They are adults; if they have a car, they are paying for the roads. If it is a controlled parking zone they will have to pay for permits. Nowadays students almost inevitably have to work to support themselves, and for plenty that means work sufficiently far away from their place of residence to need a car - possibly even more so than people living in inner east Oxford and working in town or at the hospitals. If you are going to try and base the right to a permit on whether someone pays council tax, then you had better be prepared to ban anyone in receipt of council tax benefit from having a car as well.

The same woman as was misinformed about Crescent and Paul Kent Hall questioned why students can be given car permits at Wheatley and Harcourt. Well there are sound practical reasons - the only people at Harcourt for example who are eligible to apply for a parking permit are those education students who have to travel to school based teaching placements.

Phew - as I said, bravo if you have managed to get this far. I have to say that the whole tenor of that meeting was far too antagonistic toward Brookes, and many of the reasons for that seem to originate in misunderstandings, or, as in the case of owner-occupiers selling up to landlords, of the communities' own making. Brookes is committed to helping address these issues, whatever the origins of them. But the communities need to work with Brookes to achieve it. Taking the line, as in the advertisements for the meeting, that they wish to "restrain" Brookes, does not seem to me to be conducive to a "constructive debate".

And, since "dark threats" were being issued about the prospects for politicians who are not seen to back these neighbourhoods, I will also say that I for one will be taking a dim view of those politicians who take positions that work to the detriment of students as part of a wider agenda against the university amongst some of their more vocal constituents. Some last week voted, in my opinion, against the best interests of nearly a third of their electorate. It is, indeed, usually a silent third, but I for one will do what I can to get our students to have their say in this city. Whatever problems communities may have with particular examples of student neighbours, there is far too great a tendency in this city to lump them all together as the sole cause for all your distress. Any who go around trying to claim to be "student friendly" when it suits them, but most of the time siding against them on all manner of local issues, deserve to be exposed as cynical and somewhat unsophisticatedly so hypocrites.