The infrastructure in Hyde Park and Woodhouse is collapsing under the weight of student numbers. Bins don't get emptied because students' cars make streets inaccessible to bin wagons.
Crime is worse because students make easy targets for criminals. And our green spaces have been taken over by students because the university's nearest green spaces are at Weetwood and Bodington, four miles away. Anti-social behaviour mainly by stude
nts has made the local park Woodhouse Moor inaccessible to local people. Leeds City Council parks department senior supervisor Graham Squires was recently reported in the YEP as saying: "They were partying from 7.30 in the morning on Saturday, hundreds of them. The park was covered with students, all drunk." At about the same time, a pensioner was reported as saying she'd like to have her twin sister's body exhumed from Woodhouse Cemetery after finding a couple having sex in broad daylight near her sister's grave. She said "The students treat the cemetery like it's their back garden." More than 10,000 people are buried in Woodhouse Cemetery, but despite this and the fact that games are supposed to be forbidden, when I visited the cemetery recently, I found students playing football over the graves.
In recent years, large numbers of student tower blocks have been built in Hyde Park and Woodhouse, and neighbouring City and Hunslet. This has greatly increased the numbers using Woodhouse Moor as the university's own outdoor recreational facilities are several miles from the university (and are soon to be moved even further away). Leeds University recently unveiled plans to increase student numbers even further. Given it's clear that neither Leeds City Council, nor the police, nor Leeds University can cope with present numbers, the university's plans would seem to be the height of irresponsibility. Woodhouse Moor is the most intensively used park in Leeds and that's because of the massive student population. If Leeds University wants to further add to student numbers, let it first provide a park for them on its own campus, and playing fields too. Until that happens, Leeds City Council has a duty to the residents to refuse any further applications for student accommodation in this area.
BILL MCKINNON, Leeds.
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