Below is a letter for Bath and North East Somerset Council's attention re the City's student population. Please take a moment to read and if you support the request to apply a ceiling to student numbers in our World Heritage City of Bath, please sign.

To BANES

Bath has two excellent universities, but with both expanding their intake on an annual basis this creates a problem with regards to accommodation, too many students for the size of the City of Bath.

Number of students in Bath is 21, 908

The population of Bath is 88,859

Therefore, 24.65% of people living in Bath are students. 

As opposed to the Bristol which has a student population of 47,211 with a population of 437,500.

Therefore the 10.79% of people living in Bristol are students. 

These figures show that Bath has an excessive student population in comparison to Bristol as a proportion of the population, therefore, it has a greater impact on the community and the City in general. 

The City of Bath is a World Heritage Site and as such needs to be protected. Many absentee landlords do not have an interest in maintaining the World Heritage status of the City. Their sole concern is to extract maximum profit from the properties they own. This results in many of the houses becoming dilapidated over the years as neither the occupants nor the owners have an interest in the external appearance of the property.

The World Heritage Committee examines reports on the state of the conservation and asks states parties to take action when sites are not being properly managed.

The mission statement from UNESCO is ‘To encourage participation of the local population in the preservation of their cultural heritage.’ In 2007 ‘Community’ was added to the strategic objectives, in recognition of the fact that conservation, capacity building, credibility and communication are all intrinsically linked to the role of the community.

Bath and North East Somerset Council state as one of its aims is ‘to create neighbourhoods where people are proud to live.’ While this has been the case in the past, unfortunately this can no longer be said about the Oldfield Park and Westmoreland areas, because of the high number of transient students living in the area and the absenteeism of the landlords.

Although the houses in these areas are not listed, most are Victorian, but they have an historic value and come within the World Heritage Site of the City of Bath.

It is requested that the members of Bath and North East Somerset Council, regardless of party political affiliation, lobby the appropriate governments departments to accept that Bath as a World heritage site is a special case, and therefore, apply a ceiling to the numbers of students at both of the City’s universities.