Clampdown on student ghettos (From The Oxford Times)

Clampdown on student ghettos

8:41am Thursday 4th February 2010 in

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NEW measures to combat the growth of student ghettos across Oxford will target bad landlords and rowdy students.

Oxford Brookes University has announced plans to pay for its own police support officers to ensure “responsible behaviour” of its students on campus and surrounding streets.

It follows news that Oxford City Council is to clamp down on poor landlords, with a licensing scheme aimed at improving the quality of private rented accommodation.

Residents’ groups have been campaigning against the student ‘colonisation’ of Headington and other parts of the city, claiming the spread of houses of multiple occupation was blighting communities.

This week they received a double boost. Brookes says it is appointing two police community support officers, who will work with students on personal safety, behaviour and good relations with local residents.

Dr Anne Gwinnett, the university’s director of corporate affairs, said: “The PCSOs will be based at the university’s campus services offices at the Gipsy Lane site, operating both on campus and in the surrounding streets.”

Last week, Housing Minister John Healey, on a visit to Oxford, announced that the Government would address concerns about multi-occupancy in cities like Oxford, with councils given powers to introduce compulsory licensing schemes for private landlords, making it harder to set up shared homes.

Oxford has one of the highest proportions of houses of multiple occupation in the country, with about 5,000 HMOs, and for years residents in East Oxford have complained that too many family homes had become HMOs.

The leader of Oxford City Council, Bob Price, said: “We will need to look at the finer details, but from April we will aim to set up a compulsory licensing scheme for all private landlords.

“There will be an enforcement regime which will encourage landlords to improve standards and there will be the threat of not insignificant fines if they do not comply with the standards required by the licence.”

Mr Price said the licensing scheme would look at external decoration, and the management of gardens and waste.

Sietske Boeles, of the Divinity Road Area Residents’ Association, said people across Oxford would be “jubilant”.

Ms Boeles added: “For many years we have campaigned to get this legislation. But we would like to see the introduction of so-called areas of restraint by limiting the number of properties which have a licence to convert into an HMO.”

She gave a guarded response to the plans for PCSOs.

“We are glad Brookes is recognising that students contribute to problems. But we will need to know when there would be policing. It would be no use having them working from nine to five. They would be wanted when students are coming out of the nightclubs.”

It is expected that the new powers would allow the council to tackle unsafe and sub-standard rented accommodation.

Landlords who do not comply with the compulsory licensing scheme could face fines of up to £20,000.

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said: “With the enormous housing pressure there has been a flood of conversions to houses of multiple occupation. There are a lot of irresponsible landlords who, if you give them an inch, they take a mile.

“There is a clear case for citywide licensing and tougher controls through the planning system.”