The Student Management Plan submitted by Mace with their planning application needs quite a bit of work.

Aside from punctuation, grammar errors and typos, there are a few errors of substance.

First, Botley Development Company (the new name of Doric Properties) are to be managing this student and university staff accommodation. That doesn’t instill confidence, as I haven’t seen evidence they have done this before. In various places in the SMP, we are to be reassured by BDCL’s experience in managing quality student accommodation. I’m unaware Doric have ever done this before.

Second, this SMP is written for halls full of teenager undergrads, who will all arrive at once in the autumn. My understanding is that much or most of this housing is intended for mature or grad students, or staff at one of the universities. It needs to be rewritten with the actual make up of the residents in mind.

Third, on site staff will need offices and facilities of their own. I haven’t seen these in the plans. Are they there and I missed them?

Fourth, an out of hours on-demand bus service between Headington and City Centre doesn’t make sense. How does that help students and staff living in Botley? This seems to demonstrate a lack of care in creating this doc, OR, confusion about where this student accommodation is to be built.

Finally, we are assured that wardens and staff will do checks to ensure no students’ cars are parked locally. I don’t understand how this will work. What will be checked? All cars parked locally against a list of registrations for cars students promised not to bring? How will that work?

I also have questions about cycle parking. If the cycle parking is not provided near the doors to accommodation, won’t students simply bring their valuable cycles into their rooms? That can’t be good.

I think the best solution at this stage is to make the approval of a well-formed Student Management Plan a planning condition (if the application is approved). My request is for the planning case officer to add this to the list of planning conditions.