UNIVERSITY students are to be encouraged to be good neighbours thanks to a new campaign organised by staff at the Whiteknights campus.
While many students live in halls of residence around the campus, others rent homes in the vicinity.
The new Hello Neighbour campaign aims to help them get on better with full-time residents of the Ding.
It comes with the traditional end-of-year turnaround of accommodation, which sees students moving on having a large clear out. The local democracy reporting service has seen overflowing bins in Blenheim Road, among other student streets.
Molli Cleaver, the university’s community relations officer, is behind the idea and said it will encourage students to be more responsible tenants, including with their waste, recycling, bottles, noise, safety and parking.
“Hello Neighbour will be run in collaboration with Reading Borough Council, Thames Valley Police and Reading University Students Union and will include another series of door knocking sessions in late September and early October where we will be handing out Hello Neighbour packs that contain the information mentioned above,” she said.
“I have been working hard with Redlands and Park Ward Councillors alongside Cllr Karen Rowland, lead councillor for environmental services and community safety, to take a more joined up approach to dealing with these issues.
“In particular, there will be clearer signposting for local residents if they do face any waste issues that they believe are being caused by students.”
And she said that there would be close co-operation with the council’s recycling and enforcement team. They visit key student streets and report any issues.
“I am then able to identify the student tenants and address them directly to deal with the excess waste,” Ms Cleaver said.
An extra bin collection was held on Saturday, funded by the university, and additional information will be shared with students over glass recycling.
“The Hello Neighbour campaign will contain information on bottle bank locations to encourage students to not let glass build up in front gardens,” Ms Cleaver said.
“We are also fully supportive of the council’s efforts to lobby Government to change local bin collections so glass can be collected from individual homes which would significantly improve the problem.”
