Bulletin No. 9, June 2020

From Andrew Waller

Hello, everyone—I hope you’re all well. After a long publishing gap in this very strange year, it’s time for a catch-up. Welcome to recent joiners: This list is now close to 300.

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In this issue:

• Rebooting community liaison
• Future of Operation Beech
• Efforts to curb HMO expansion 

The State of Play

After the lockdown lull, I’ve had a flurry of noise reports. It seems a lot of students returned to Bristol in late May, even though courses are now online. Some may have genuine reasons to be here, but others clearly came to socialise. About a dozen of you have written to me expressing concern about apparent lockdown breaches.

Those problems will hopefully soon ease as students leave for the summer but they provide a foretaste of what may await in October, when the new university year begins. The usual noise barrage coupled with disregard for the virus (which surely will still be a danger) would be a worrying combination. So the conversation we were trying to have with the University of Bristol before lockdown is crucially important. (See below.)

Equally important is the conversation between residents groups. In the wake of UoB’s decision to abandon Community Liaison Group meetings, I polled the groups by email to gauge reaction and was delighted that pretty much everyone responded. I also reported back on a meeting I and Chandos chair Diana Swain had with UoB in early March. I think we need to restart these conversations soon. (Again, more below.)

In the background, there’s also an ongoing effort by Bristol City Council to limit the spread of HMOs. Some of you submitted views to the public consultation. And residents in Cotham Vale defeated an attempt to gain retrospective approval for an illegal HMO.

Lastly, what of Operation Beech? Will UoB continue funding these anti-noise police patrols, which proved a godsend to many? Or will there be a post-virus plea of poverty?

Community Liaison

Quick recap: UoB has for a decade invited residents’ groups to twice-yearly meetings of a Community Liaison Group to discuss issues such as noise, waste, car parking etc. In December, with several new faces at UoB handling community issues, this all changed. No notice—the meeting simply didn’t happen. In January, UoB said it would in future meet groups individually. It also hoped to revive a “partnership” structure that briefly existed some years ago. But it wasn’t clear (and still isn’t) if residents would be invited.

Several residents’ groups objected, and I wrote to the Vice Chancellor. In early March, I was offered a meeting with Lucinda Parr, who as registrar is part of UoB senior management. Diana Swain, chair of the Chandos Neighbourhood Association, joined this meeting. Lucinda Parr said she’d recently taken responsibility for community liaison and planned a series of consultations, of which ours was the first. Diana and I addressed most of the points raised in my letter and UoB listened, but gave little away. We haven’t heard anything further. Most of the questions therefore remain unanswered.

Residents’ Groups

In parallel with those discussions, I sent a couple of email round-robins to residents’ groups* to test opinion. The majority want the CLG or an equivalent forum reinstated and there was an emerging consensus—interrupted as we all became preoccupied with Covid19—that if UoB refuses to offer a forum-style meeting, the groups should convene their own and ask UoB to attend. Indeed, RCAS had agreed to chair and if necessary fund such a meeting and I had begun identifying a venue. While it was clearly pointless to continue with this discussion at the height of the pandemic, I think it’s time to revive it and I will circulate the groups again shortly. In the meantime, if your group is in contact with the university, please share any key information so that we’re all on the same page.

*The groups on my list are, in no particular order, Chandos, RCAS (Redland & Cotham Amenity Society), Highbury, High Kingsdown, Cotham Hill, Clifton Down, Oakfield, Richmond Hill and Clifton & Hotwells, plus a few individual residents and ward councillors.

The Avon & Somerset Police website now acknowledges that noise is not just a “nuisance”, to be dealt with by councils, but can also be a police matter, to be treated as anti-social behaviour. Has anyone told the 101 call handlers?

Coronavirus

I’d intended to stay out of debates about who is or isn’t complying with lockdown but recent noise reports show it’s a concern to many. One issue is whether students who went home for Easter broke the law by coming back to Bristol in May. If “home” is somewhere else, surely their Bristol HMOs are second homes? UoB says the HMOs are their primary residences, so no rules broken.

But what will happen this summer? Will they stay in Bristol at the new lets they’ve already signed for but not yet lived in, or go “home” to mum and dad? What's the "primary residence" now? The least you can say is that the law doesn’t deal very well with the student situation—which makes it easier for students to ignore it altogether.

And that’s the bigger worry. At a student house near me, there’s been a procession of people arriving and leaving who don’t live there—clearly a breach of the current law. Some noise reports have cited numbers of people that exceed the number of tenants the HMO is licensed for: These also appear to be breaches.

The question is whether UoB's response will match its strong words—see Covid Warning, above—and thereby prevent its student population becoming a breeding ground for the virus when the university is back in full session in October.

Operation Beech

UoB’s big innovation for 2019-20 was to fund police noise patrols: Two officers in a vehicle, responding to resident requests texted to a mobile phone between 8pm and 2am. Most patrols were in the first term, with others throughout the year. It was “light touch” policing based on persuasion—but effective, judging from your feedback.

However, UoB were non-committal about its future when Diana and I met them in March, and a series of Beech dates planned for this month appears to have been cancelled. You will probably have seen media reports that universities expect to lose income because of coronavirus, so we’re naturally worried that Beech won’t reappear.

That would be a pity: Beech not only provided a direct response but also, I suspect, lowered the general anxiety that comes from anticipating a noisy night and knowing it’s extremely unlikely you will get any assistance. Still, some small positives: UoB’s Sarah Purdy publicly acknowledged that UoB should help pay for responses to noise, and Beech showed beyond doubt that the police have both the powers and the ability to deal with noise, which is not what the call handlers say when you ring 101.

Have you rung 101 to report a noise problem in the last three months?

What did the call handlers say to you? Let me know!

HMOs

Amidst the coronavirus headlines, deliberations on Bristol City Council’s attempts to limit the future spread of HMOs have been quietly trundling along in the background. The council is sifting through responses it received from the public earlier this year, prior to presenting updated proposals to a final consultation this autumn.

In my own submission, available here, I supported the basic proposals and listed practical steps that HMO developers should be required to implement to mitigate noise problems—eg, fit soft closers so that slamming doors don’t wake neighbours.

I also argued that “the HMO problem” has as much to do with failures of council and police enforcement as it does with the building type and occupancy. If the council and police used their powers effectively, most of the issues would be nipped in the bud and HMOs would not generate nearly so much angst.

The need to limit HMOs became urgent because UoB plans to bring thousands more students into the city. Most of these are supposed to go to purpose-built accommodation associated with the satellite campus planned at Temple Meads. Last year I asked UoB what would happen if we hit a recession and the commercial providers of this planned accommodation failed to show up. Well, maybe we're about to find out. Indeed, one wonders if the Temple Meads plan itself will survive the virus ..?

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