The expansion of university places, combined with a decrease in traditional halls of residence, has resulted in greater numbers of students than ever before renting flats from private landlords. In university towns and in the student quarters of our cities this has become a particular problem. The lifestyles of young people experiencing their first taste of freedom all too frequently clash with those of established residents, who are often elderly people and families with young children. Being close to a university used to mean living in one of the pleasanter parts of our cities. In some cases it has now come to mean the reverse.

The expansion of university places, combined with a decrease in traditional halls of residence, has resulted in greater numbers of students than ever before renting flats from private landlords. In university towns and in the student quarters of our cities this has become a particular problem. The lifestyles of young people experiencing their first taste of freedom all too frequently clash with those of established residents, who are often elderly people and families with young children. Being close to a university used to mean living in one of the pleasanter parts of our cities. In some cases it has now come to mean the reverse.

The problems are worst when the two groups share the same buildings, such as in tenements in the west end of Glasgow, where a noisy party in one flat cannot be blocked out in the adjoining ones. The difficulty has been recognised by the imposing of a limit of 10% on the proportion of houses in multiple occupation in the area closest to Glasgow University and 5% elsewhere in the city. Residents in the area just outside the 10% zone say that in some streets the level of HMO houses has reached 11% where it should be 5%. Their complaints that the limit on the number of houses in multiple occupation is not working echo those made in other areas with large student populations.

There has been friction between town and gown for centuries, but the current difficulties are not merely the occasional late-night, high-spirited escapades of youth of which many a grey-haired pillar of the community was once guilty. Both the nature and scale of student life have shifted in a generation. Demand for student accommodation outstrips supply and landlords who lease flats to students have very profitable businesses. Tenancy agreements with private landlords tend to run on an annual basis rather than on an academic year. That means students - and their party habit - stay year-round in their group flats. As increasing numbers of the neighbouring owner-occupiers point out, the landlords have no personal stake in the neighbourhood, other than in the way its general desirability boosts the value of their property. However, it is the nitty gritty of daily life - putting the rubbish in the right bins, putting the bins out on the right day and keeping the communal areas clean and tidy - that makes the difference between a pleasant and a depressing environment. Students, as our future professionals, some of whom will no doubt even become councillors, MSPs or planning officials, should be responsible tenants, and many are; but they do not have the same stake in their temporary homes as their older neighbours.

The traditional way of resolving conflict between students and townsfolk has been through dialogue. The present difficulties are part of a much wider, longer-term issue that needs to involve not just residents and student bodies but the councils who administer the HMO legislation and the universities, which have been steadily transferring responsibility for student accommodation to the market-place, to the benefit of private landlords rather than the community as a whole.