Student takeover is ruining our city

The ‘studentification’ of Bath continues, with a proposal that the Regency Cleaners, on the Lower Bristol Road, is to be replaced by yet more student apartments, these to accommodate 189 students.

Has a law been passed by Parliament stipulating that all new-builds in Bath (and other university cities, it seems) must be exclusively for students?

Not only have large parts of Oldfield Park been turned into an increasingly shabby student ghetto, with greedy, absentee, buy-to-let landlords buying former family houses to rent solely to students, the Lower Bristol Road, from the former Pickfords’ site near South Quays west to Twerton, is being turned into a corridor of student flats.

We do not need, or want, any more student accommodation in Bath. We need to provide more – and more affordable – housing for young couples, families and local workers, many of whom are being forced out of Bath due to the lack of available or affordable housing. Landlords can make much more money from student lets, so they prioritise those over local people. Every house purchased by a buyto-let landlord, and then turned into an HMO, is one less house which is available for purchase by a young couple or local family.

Meanwhile, BANES council seems in thrall to landlords and property consortiums specialising solely in accommodation for students.

Bath residents come fourth in the council’s priorities, behind students, tourists and landlords. This once beautiful city is being ruined by the student takeover, and the seemingly deliberate refusal to provide housing for local people.

This is not the fault of the students themselves, I should add. Unfortunately, like the rest of our former public services, our local universities are now run as moneymaking businesses, with the objective of increasing their income and revenue each year.

As such, student ‘customers’ are viewed as lucrative bums on seats, each paying at least £9,000 per annum. Of course, the universities have no interest in the problems which their increasing student intake causes for the rest of Bath, in terms of accommodation, traffic congestion, etc.

Ultimately, residents are suffering from the greed of universities, landlords and property companies, and the seeming inability or unwillingness of the council to say ‘No, enough is enough’ to any of them. Pete Dorey & Jane King Bath