Plan for university colleges to go ahead

PLANS FOR two new colleges at the University of York will go ahead – despite residents’ fears over parking problems.

The scheme will provide accommodation for 1,480 students on campus, although people living near the campus have warned that the development will accentuate problems in streets already clogged up with parked vehicles.

Alan Richards, who lives in Badger Hill, told a York Council meeting that a tutor’s car was parked on a junction for five weeks last year, meaning other vehicles had to manoeuvre round onto the wrong side of the road.

He added: “Things have definitely got worse over the last couple of years. More and more cars are being parked, a number are abandoned. I’m not particularly optimistic about 2019 when you add 1,400 more undergraduates on campus and have staff coming in with extra cars.”

Coun Keith Aspden said residents in Heslington Village also have concerns, as they feel the development is too close to their neighbourhood.

The university currently pays for the existing residents’ parking scheme in the area. But Stephen Talboys, from the University of York, said: “We take action against anyone who causes a nuisance. We take our responsibilities very seriously.”

He added if the development did not go ahead, the students would live in the city in houses in multiple occupation and cause a “much more negative impact on the local community in our view”.

The committee heard its decision would be limited by the Secretary of State’s decision to grant outline permission for the university’s expansion in 2006.