Why Leicester?

Leicester is in many ways typical of current United Kingdom cities: culturally and ethnically diverse, yet retaining much of its traditional role as a market centre, and also supporting major sports teams. It has undergone considerable economic change during the last 40 years moving to a diverse pattern of activity now encompassing service and leisure provision, distributive trades, plastics, food manufacture – and higher education. Leicester has become a ‘student city’. The city's population is almost 300,000. Leicester University has some 8,440 of its 16,929 students resident in the city or the immediately surrounding districts (1999 figures). De Montfort University had some 30,550 students in 1998/99, and over half of these were Leicester based. About one in ten of Leicester's population is a higher education student – and that figure is certainly met if the numbers of those in further education are added in. The considerable numbers of students in Leicester make a marked impact on the economic life and functioning of the city; they also generate a demand for accommodation. This has, to a high degree, been largely met by a rapidly reviving rented sector in housing – though it is clear that this revival is a developing phenomenon not simply dependent on the student market.

A little legal and policy history

Even before the expansion of the higher education sector in the 1960s, (Robbins, 1963) universities were generally unable to accommodate all their students domestically. There was a clearly established role for the private rented sector in providing undergraduate student accommodation either in the form of ‘digs’or via the renting of flats and houses. The creation of a ‘new wave’of universities in the 1960s and 1970s alongside that of the polytechnics, created increased demands for rented accommodation in university and college towns, a phenomenon noted in House of Commons debates where it was pointed out that at the University of Sussex half the students had to find accommodation off campus (Hansard, 1974(a)).

This chapter will consider student housing as it has since developed, with particular regard to Leicester, under two headings: ‘provision’ and ‘governance’.

Provision

Institutional accommodation

Students occupying institutional accommodation have generally occupied either traditional ‘catered hall’ accommodation or ‘self-catering’ blocks of study bedrooms with associated kitchens.