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Public Meeting on
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Notes made by Marilyn Cox, Secretary, Jack Straw’s Lane Association. (These are not intended to be minutes and do not cover everything that was said at the meeting.) The aim of the meeting, which was chaired by Nick Welsh (Divinity Road Residents' Association) was to provide a forum for discussion of the major concerns local residents have about the impact of Oxford Brookes University on their lives and how problems could be resolved. More than 80 residents attended. (The photo was taken at the end, after some people had left.) The first speaker, Professor Danny Dorling of the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, began by explaining that his talk was not going to be about the new student centre. Rather, he wished to address the question of why the coexistence of residents and students was more problematic in some university towns than others: why, for example, had Leeds experienced problems, while Sheffield and Newcastle had not? Problems, he believed, arose in areas where there was a shortage of space, and consequently a shortage of accommodation, as well as a high turnover of people. In Oxford the cumulative effect of students and staff of the universities and the hospitals requiring a percentage of the available private rented accommodation put considerable pressure on communities. And he believed there was worse – “far worse” – heading Oxford’s way. Oxford’s population, he believes, is set to grow. Firstly, it is ‘a little bit too near to London’, which is filling up rapidly and, like some other cities, undergoing a ‘hollowing out’, as those who are able to move to congenial areas still within commuting distance of the capital – areas such as Oxford. Meanwhile, a drop in the number of families on an average income living within Oxford is being more than offset by students and other types of resident moving in. Secondly, current government policies regarding education, which are moving towards a free market for university places, are likely to lead to a substantial increase in Oxford’s student population. Professor Dorling explained that Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced an extensive review of university funding (although this may not take place until after the next General Election), with the intention of allowing universities to set their own fees, which would relieve the government of the onus of providing subsidies. The ‘Oxford brand’ would give the city’s universities, in particular, scope to raise their fees in this ‘free market’ and therefore the socio-economic range of the families able to afford them would narrow. Consequently, the percentage of students admitted from local schools would fall and the number of students coming from more affluent families further afield, and needing to find accommodation in Oxford, would rise. This need for additional accommodation would increase pressure on land and could further threaten the Green Belt. Furthermore, there was likely to be an overall increase in students not only at Oxford Brookes but also at Oxford University, since the current financial crisis had had a serious effect on the finances of the latter and both universities would be under pressure to admit more students, if the fees they paid were substantially higher, either as undergraduates or post-graduates. With a ‘free market’ came the risk that Oxford would become, as Cambridge is now, a ‘service centre’, where, increasingly, permanent residents live outside its periphery. The city, Professor Dorling felt, did not need any more 18 to 19-year-olds arriving looking for accommodation. If there was to be any growth, it should be in post-graduate education and research. What was really needed was an increase in the proportion of local students and less travelling to and fro across the country. Oxford, he said, fared poorly in enabling its own children to get a university education, ranking third worst in the country as regards qualifications gained by 16-year-olds, partly, but not wholly, due to the relatively high proportion of children of immigrants and asylum-seekers. There was, he said, a large number of private schools in the city. And care should be taken, he warned, not to ‘overheat’ the south of the country and kill off the north. As for anti-social behaviour, Professor Dorling believed this was likely to be higher in areas where the proportion of young people was far higher than that of older people, who were generally less likely to cause disruption. He also referred to his research relating to ‘anomie’ (a lack of integration in social life and the alienation and loneliness that can be experienced by residents living in student-dominated communities). He said that the prevalence and rapid turnover of occupancy of student housing had a detrimental effect on the well-being of long-term residents, who experienced a sense of dissociation from society as a result. The new Government proposals for university funding would exacerbate this social problem.
Statements were read to the meeting from: Mr Andrew Smith, MP for Oxford East click here Pullen’s Lane Allotment Society: The PLAS statement expressed dissatisfaction at being unable to comment on what they termed a ‘pre-emptive bid’ by Brookes, just prior to the Oxford Core Strategy hearings, or what Brookes had referred to as ‘putting down a marker’ to obtain exclusive rights to develop Pullen’s Lane allotments and Warneford Playing Fields, if/when these sites became available. This submission by Brookes was made just before the deadline for comments on the Core Strategy, which meant that PLAS members had no time to submit a comment themselves or obtain a seat at the table during the Core Strategy discussions. They had only been able to get a hearing through local residents’ associations that had secured seats at the table. This had made them ‘very wary’ of Brookes, who, they felt, should have behaved in a ‘less predatory’ way.
Questions and comments were invited from the audience Mr Sean Feeney (who had attended all sessions of the Core Strategy hearing) said that, for him, the crucial issue that had emerged from the hearing was whether Oxford served ‘big business’ or its residents. An East Oxford resident complained that all the houses that came onto the market in his area were being bought up by developers and then let to students, who were able to pay high rents because so many of them were crammed into a house. In response, Professor Dorling said that he had observed a shift to a commercial view of towns and communities. This was apparent even among secondary-school students in Sheffield, who preferred the option of social geography that was more business-oriented to that of studying inequality. The idea of ‘selling one’s city’ and competing with other areas had evolved, as some cities saw their population fall and unwanted houses being demolished. Mr Feeney later said that Oxford City Council’s plan for Brookes was that the university should be permitted to expand by 1%-2% annually. If this figure were approved by Mr David Fenton (the Core Strategy Inspector), and made binding, the decision would have to be respected. In the event of such approval from Mr Fenton, there would be a six-week window to go to Judicial Review of the Core Strategy and Mr Feeney urged people, in that case, to write to the Secretary of State. Mr Feeney said that at the next General Election, all candidates for Oxford East should be pressed to make a statement on their standpoint regarding Oxford Brookes’s expansion, as it was an electoral issue likely to influence how people there voted. Residents, he said, should ‘reassert democracy at both national and local level’ and he urged those present to write to Andrew Smith MP expressing their concerns about this matter. Mr John Skinner, a resident of St Mary’s, East Oxford, since the 1970s, believed the majority of local university students were really pleasant people but there was a need for some control of their numbers; in the 30 years or so up to the year 2000 the number of students at Oxford University grew from 5,800 to 11,300, while Oxford Brookes University (formerly Oxford Polytechnic) saw a rise from 1,900 in 1972 to 18,000 today – nearly a 10-fold increase, although in 1972 it had been predicted that its numbers might rise to 4,000). The current plan is for Brookes to grow by up to 2% per year. He said that whereas in 1970 29% of the houses in one street were HMOs, in 2009 the figure was 75%, and residents were moving out; rents were high, as six students in a house could afford to pay a lot; the collection of rubbish produced by HMOs was not well organised. Instead of being a city of dreaming spires, Oxford was becoming a city of plastic bags. The mix of shops on the Cowley Road had changed: restaurants, take-away services and letting agents had increased in number, while the number of food shops had declined. He had gained the impression that the city’s planners were encouraging the ‘gentrification’ of George Street and that they wanted night-clubs to be concentrated on Cowley Road, which meant more noise in the early hours to disturb residents living along that road. (Mr Feeney agreed with this.) Mr Skinner was not against Brookes, just against too many students. Brookes needed to be accountable to the community, to discuss an agreed limit, with possibly some increase in research students but certainly not an increase in undergraduates. A former Brookes mature student said that since 1989 the St Mary’s Road area had housed many previously homeless families, including young people between 16 and 24 years of ago, vulnerable teenagers, waves of asylum-seekers, nurses who had come from abroad to work in local hospitals. Mr Skinner replied that things had changed over the years and now about two thirds of the houses were occupied by Brookes students. One resident present did not feel that the 10% of the HMOs occupied by Brookes students was an excessive amount. Professor Dorling replied that Brookes’s planned expansion of 2% per year would equate to an extra 360 students in the first year, and he believed that they had more than 1,800 students living in HMOs. Mr Anthony Cheke (Hurst Street Residents’ Association) said that a survey conducted in Hurst Street re parking had revealed that two thirds of the houses were occupied by Brookes students and one third by young professionals, so the 10% quoted by Brookes was far from accurate. Cllr Stuart Craft (Independent Working Class Association, Northfield Brook) had observed that in some areas of Oxford estate agents specifically advertised ‘student house to let’, rather than ‘house to let’. Dr Susan Mallett, a resident of New Marston, said that she had found it very difficult to get clear figures from Brookes relating to the growth in student numbers over the last 10 years and to the situation regarding to the provision of student accommodation. Brookes was building new student accommodation but also losing study rooms through the sale of existing halls of residence. On 22 July at the Core Strategy hearing Brookes said they had 3,800 students in private rented accommodation but they also had properties head-leased from private owners, which, Rex Knight confirmed, were counted as ‘university’ accommodation. Dr Mallett said that the Core Strategy Inspector had taken a hard line on the grounds of Planning Rule ED6 and had not considered that those head-leased properties should be counted as university accommodation. If they could be counted as university accommodation, all Brookes had to do to comply with requirements would be to buy up properties. She finished by regretting that there had been no real campaign against the Core Strategy in August 2008 (which supported Brookes’s expansion). She encouraged people to write to Andrew Smith MP, thereby supporting a point made earlier by Mr Sean Feeney, who said that at the next general election all candidates for Oxford East should make a statement on their standpoint regarding Brookes’s expansion. Dr Anne Gwinnett, Brookes’s Director of Corporate Affairs since 2005, who will now be chairing the Brookes and Residents’ Associations meeting, gave her response to a number of points raised. She felt that some of the figures quoted regarding the number of Brookes students were misleading and explained that the 1,800 currently in private rented accommodation were not necessarily studying on an Oxford campus. The university was in the process of creating 800 more places in halls of residence and was working hard with local councils to resolve accommodation problems. As for the percentage of HMOs occupied by Brookes students, she said that this varied across the city – it would be less than 10% in some roads and more in others. The figure of 2% annual growth, Dr Gwinnett said, was the maximum envisaged; it had been 0.5% over the last 10 years and this growth had not occurred in Oxford but on other campuses or in distance learning. She said Brookes did publish statistics on student numbers and she would be happy to work with Dr Mallett to clarify the situation. Responding to criticism that Brookes did not take enough local students, she said that 20% of the university’s student intake came from Oxfordshire (there are no specific figures for Oxford itself), that it worked very closely with local schools and many of its students came from a lower socio-economic level and state schools. Dr Gwinnett believes students do contribute to the local economy: assuming a student’s net income to be £12,000, after paying out 25% of this in costs related to their university attendance, they are left with £9,000 to spend in the local community. Responding to a criticism made by one resident that students needed more in the way of pastoral care and preparation for life away from home, she said that Brookes went to great lengths to make its students aware of their responsibilities to the community in which they lived. In response to the question of whether the Wheatley campus was to be closed, Dr Gwinnett said this was definitely not the case. In conclusion, she said that further consideration of a number of key concerns had been instigated by Brookes. Dr Sietske Boeles (Southfield Road) said that her daughter, a pupil at Cheney School, had informed her that she had been told that day that Brookes were seeking to buy the school, the suggestion being that its pupils should move to a site in Cricket Road. She asked whether there was any truth in this. Dr Gwinnett said there was no foundation at all in that rumour. Mr Harry Edwards (Highfield Residents Association) expressed his disappointment that Brookes’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Janet Beer, did not intend to chair the meetings of Brookes and the Residents’ Associations, as the previous Vice-Chancellor, Professor Graham Upton had done. Mr Tony Joyce (Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of Headington Residents’ Associations and of Oxford Civic Society) felt that managing community affairs in Oxford was very difficult. Approaches that worked well elsewhere were ‘sorely tested’ here. National legislation could not adequately address the city’s specific problems and residents had to act in an ‘extraordinary’ way. He acknowledged that the extensive development of hospital facilities in Headington had also put pressure on the local community and felt that part of the problem was that efforts to resolve difficulties had been directed towards consultation with each institution individually, rather than bringing all parties together to consider the situation jointly. As regards liaison with Brookes, some of this had gone well, but at other times it had been ‘a bit patchy’. Liaison with the John Radcliffe Hospital had at one time been good but had diminished over the years. Mr Joyce believed that little progress would be made unless ‘a very special sort of cooperation between communities and these institutions’ could be achieved. Despite useful, and much appreciated, contributions from local Councillors, past experience had shown that the City Council was unable to resolve the problems. The way forward had to be through a joint consultation with all the institutions in Headington. Mr Edwards also felt that the incremental effect of the development of the Headington hospitals, as well as that of Brookes, should be given serious consideration. The hospitals had added 1.5 million m2 to their sites and 4,000 to their staff over recent years. Cllr Simmons believed the effect of the introduction of variable university fees was a significant aspect to be considered. The Green Party opposed the introduction of variable fees. Commenting on licensing, the Co-Chairman of the Anglo-Asian Association of East Oxford said that the police had been telling the City Council that Cowley Road was ‘saturated’ with night clubs and things had come to a head with the application made by the Baby Simple bar. The Council had said that some of the representations made opposing this licence had to be rejected because they had been made by people who were not deemed to be resident within the immediate vicinity of the club. Cllr Simmons (St Mary’s,) was of the opinion that the Licensing Act generally favoured the applicant. Cllr Simmons added that he did not agree with the decision made at the meeting of the Full Council not to include Policy ED6 of the Local Plan as a reason for refusing planning consent for the new student centre. Mr Paul Freestone (Aston Street) believed that Brookes students were largely responsible for local parking problems, He suggested a blanket ban on students having cars in Oxford and that student houses should not be given residents’ parking permits. Dr Gwinnett said that Brookes students were told before they began their studies that they would not need a car in Oxford and those living in the university’s halls of residence were not allowed to have a car. Cllr Nuala Young (St Clements, Green) gave an assurance that councillors would do their best to achieve a balance of housing and reduce problems caused by drinking and anti-social behaviour by students. What was needed, she felt, was for the Government to change the licensing laws so that there was return to earlier, tighter, restrictions. She said that Oxford did not need further growth and that residents should put up a resistance to pressure from Guildford [ie pressure from the South East England Partnership Board] for growth in every respect. Professor Kerry Patterson (Hill Top Road Residents’ Association) believed much of the problem was that Brookes students were concentrated in certain areas: Valencia Road and Grays Road, for example, had suffered greatly as a result of studentification. There was an urgent need for Brookes to engage seriously with local residents to address these problems, rather than remaining intransigent and providing ‘bland responses to genuine concerns of residents’. Mr Ken Lovesy (Headington Hill) suggested that the proposal resulting from the meeting could be that a working group be set up with the Council to address the matters. It was agreed that the group should include representatives from Oxford Brookes and the other institutions in Headington, as well as City and County Councillors representing the areas concerned. In addition to this, the North East Area Committee and the East Area Parliament should be involved. The Chairman asked Mr Joyce whether this was what he had in mind and Mr Joyce said that it was. The Chairman then proposed that the residents' associations got together to discuss how to proceed and that there should be another public meeting at a later date to provide feedback on progress. Mr Joyce urged any residents who were not already members of a residents’ association to sign up to one, as the network of these associations was very effective in tackling problems, especially with the help of e-mail. There was a need to identify gaps in the areas covered by residents’ associations and provide a solution in cases, for example, as that highlighted by a resident present, who said that there were not enough permanent residents in her road to form an association.
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