The High Kingsdown estate in the Cotham ward of Bristol is seeing some students living in the area receiving fines of up to £250 for nuisance behaviour.

Cotham is one of the wards in Bristol amongst those with the highest concentration of HMO properties in the city - according to research carried out for Bristol Council by the Building Research Establishment - a factor which has reportedly been put down, in part, to university expansion and a shortage of purpose built student accommodation in the city. It is reported that the number of students in Bristol has increased by 20% since 2015.

A supplementary planning document - 'Managing the Development of Houses in Multiple Occupation' - produced by the council in 2020 points out that, at that time, 45% of the student population in the city lived in HMOs despite the increase in purpose built accommodation. The document was also clear about the community impacts of a high concentration of HMOs including noise nuisance and waste accumulation.

The concerns raised by non-student residents living in the High Kingsdown estate were first reported in The Bristol Cable and a University of Bristol spokesperson is quoted as saying "The University will formally sanction students with a range of penalties where there are clear, reasonable, and proven grounds for doing so, including instances of excessive noise in the community." Any fines imposed on students are reportedly used to fund 'initiatives aimed at addressing student misconduct in the community and promoting community cohesion.'

A Green Party Councillor for the Cotham ward, Guy Poultney, is quoted as saying that "The big challenge is, the planning side of things is reliant on a database of where existing HMOs are, which is incomplete. Lots of HMOs are missing and that seems to be because they're just undisclosed." In other words, there is a cohort of unlicensed HMOs in the ward.

A spokesperson for the Mayor's office is quoted as saying "Our planning team are also working alongside housing teams to ensure that the various enforcement regimes .... work together where possible to respond to planning breaches ...."

Mr Poultney points out that students in Bristol "are paying about £150,000,000 every year to landlords and letting agents."

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