Belfast moves to crack down on antisocial behaviour by students

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive, with the Queen’s University, the University of Ulster, the Northern Ireland Office and Belfast council, will jointly finance eight full-time community street wardens after more than 300 complaints were made about the behaviour of drunken students.

The wardens will patrol the Holy Land area of the city between 10pm and 4am, Monday to Thursday, to detect and deter students’ antisocial behaviour and liaise with residents. It is intended that the wardens will have the power to issue on-the-spot fines for rowdy behaviour.

Queen’s University has suspended a student, fined another 18 and issued warnings to more than 100. The problem, which centres on shared student houses, is reported to be causing non-student residents in the Holy Land district to move out.

Although the problem of drunken students in Belfast has been acute for some time, matters became worse on St Patrick’s Day last Thursday. Police made 18 arrests for antisocial behaviour in the Holy Land area.

The housing executive has got involved in the process because it has statutory responsibility for registering houses in multiple occupation.

Queen’s University spokesman Kevin Mulhern said the severity of the problem was not unique to Belfast. But he said it was made much worse with the conversion of many small terraced houses near to the university for the use of up to 12 students.

“An area built to accommodate 3000 to 4000 people now has 10,000 people living in it,” he said. He added that the failure of the government to finance student accommodation was forcing undergraduates to look to the private market. But he admitted that the Irish culture of excessive drinking was another factor.