A Green Party campaigner and election candidate for the Redlands area of Reading has called on the university to increase its community outreach to tackle waste and noise issues.
Kathryn McCann, Green candidate for Redlands, has urged the University of Reading to to strengthen its Community Liaison team before the summer term ends in June.
Residents living close to the university, in areas like Redlands Ward, can face problems as a small number of students living in shared houses struggle to adjust to life outside halls.
There used to be a dedicated member of staff who would handle issues from members of the public and work on everything from helping students understand how to separate their rubbish to dealing with excessive noise.
However, the woman in the post has left and has not been replaced, while the university considers how best to spend its budget.
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Kathryn McCann said, “With the summer term coming, residents in roads with a lot of student houses are already steeling themselves for issues like bottles building up in front gardens, overflowing recycling bins and loud parties.
“The Community Liaison team can make a real difference, so we’ll keep pressing the university to make sure it has the resources to handle problems and take a proactive approach to tackling issues in the community before they cause bad feeling between students and their neighbours.”
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Tom Lake, Labour’s Redlands ward co-ordinator said: “Students have had a hard time, they’ve not been able to have the experiences they expected over the last two years.
“The university needs to do better to brief students. In November and December Labour activists distributed letters to about 1000 houses in the area around Addington Road.
“We carried out a detailed survey of the streets with problems and the leaflet was the result of that work.
“We have also taken our learning to the lead Councillor for this topic – Adele Barnett-Ward and had a lot of discussions about measures that are needed and that we believe will be gradually introduced as the Covid crisis subsides – returning bins off the pavement, adding tags to indicate the reason when a bin is rejected, bringing in a narrower truck for narrower streets and bringing in kerbside glass collection as soon as the Government gets around to setting the standards for it.”
On the suggestion, Francis Jakeman, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Redlands, said: “It’s a helpful idea. Generally community relations we have round here are very good, and the university put quite a lot of effort into encouraging students to see themselves as good neighbours.
“I suppose the main thing the rest of us notice is that some students are not terribly clear on what bins to put their rubbish in.
“The other issue is parking. Because we have a lot of Houses of Multiple Occupany (HMOs), and usually there’s only space for one car outside them.
“If others bring their cars it leads to on street parking.
“The sensible thing to do would be to encourage students to cycle, walk and use public transport, there are issues with the council with that, it’s not that straight forward to come into town, that could be improved, and there are ways to encourage people to use public transport, with special rates.”
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For her part, Allison Carnell, Conservative candidate for Redlands, said: “It’s down to the university to employ whoever they wish.
“The council should introduce kerbside glass recycling. I wish the council would introduce it sooner rather than later.
“The excuse that they have to wait for secondary legislation seems a little spurious to me.”
As for concerns over incorrectly managed rubbish and noise, Mrs Carnell said: “It comes down to being a good neighbour.
“It’s not something the university can overly enforce if people are living in private residential property.
“There’s a lot of student accommodation in Park ward, and relations long term between residents and students from what I’ve seen are reasonably amicable.”
In response to the campaign issue, a spokesperson for the university said it is boosting engagement with its team of student ambassadors, conducting Street Warden patrols in the area to help manage night time noise or nuisance, and will engage with any residents if they have complaints.
The spokesperson added: “The University is part of the local community and is committed to being positively engaged with our neighbours in Reading.
“This is a central part of the University’s mission.
“We continue to support local engagement through a number of roles and projects.”
The university has also appointed Professor Sally Lloyd-Evans as its first Public Engagement with Community Research Fellow.
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