Ann and Ray Dickson have lived in Woodcroft Road in the Picton area of Wavertree in south Liverpool for four decades.
It's safe to say they have witnessed a lot of change in the area in that time. It's even safer to say that for Ann and Ray, this has been change for the worse.
"This used to be a whole street of families," says Ann, who is 73 and originally from Woolton. She and husband Ray settled in Woodcroft Road after getting married. At the time it was a fairly typical Liverpool street full of terraced homes and a sense of community.
She adds: "Lots of people have moved out because of how things have changed, but why should we move? This is our home." The changes she refers to are both physical and cultural.
READ MORE: Anger as mess and filth strewn across city as students depart
Around half of the properties in this south Liverpool road are now Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs), mainly for students. The transient nature of the street is exemplified by how many of the properties have already been vacated by students heading home for the summer. A handful of students were still around when we visited this week, loading up cars with items and preparing to head off.
Woodcroft made headlines this week after an enormous and unsightly mess was left scattered across the street. The image of overflowing bins, discarded rubbish and dumped household items epitomised for many of the residents here just what has gone wrong in the area in recent years.
"That bin is full and hasn't been emptied for four months," says a frustrated Ann, gesticulating across the road out of the window from her neat, well appointed front room. "They probably haven't put the right things in it and now the bin men won't take it."
Speaking about the area more generally, she adds: "Why did all these properties have to be made into HMOs? It hasn't happened in Woolton or Gateacre. It's all about money at the end of the day. We've seen in one of the neighbouring houses, they have split the living room diagonally and made it into two bedrooms."
Ann and Ray said the regular issues they face of loud parties have not been as bad this year, but problems with rubbish and dumping have been worse than ever. Ann adds: "It's awful, it just feels like some people have no respect for the area. There are rats everywhere, I have never seen so many rats in my life."
For 75-year-old Ray, it is not just the students to blame but those they are paying rent to. He adds: "The students get all the blame but the problem is with the landlords too. They need to take responsibility for the area."
Woodcroft's problems have been replicated in plenty of other streets that lie close to Smithdown Road. And similar problems have been found in other student housing enclaves in Kensington and Everton. Both of these areas saw rubbish dumped across streets as students moved out this week.
Around the turn of the century and in the years following it, Liverpool's status as a thriving and popular university city really began to motor. The combined offer of a brilliant nightlife and social scene as well as the emerging reputations of the universities themselves proved a potent combination.
There is no doubt this growth and the students that were attracted to the city because of it provided - and continue to provide - a vital boost to Liverpool's economic, cultural and social growth. But there was always going to be a cost.
With students flooding in and cheap properties on the market, there were huge opportunities for landlords to buy up houses, convert them into multiple-occupancy properties and easily fill them with the young people that were heading for the city. Until very recently, landlords would not even be required to seek planning permission in order to take a three-bed family terrace, gut it and squeeze six bedrooms inside.
In recent years the city council has moved to try and address this issue. Last year a new planning direction called Article 4 changed the rules around the creation of HMOs. The new rules mean in areas like Wavertree and Kensington - where this is a particular issue - any developer wanting to turn a normal dwelling house into a HMO of any size now requires specific planning permission.
It's a welcome move, but for some it is far too late and the damage is already done. A couple of doors down from Ann and Ray is 74-year-old Linda Prinell, who has lived in her property for her entire life.
"It really was a lovely area. I knew so many families here, everyone knew each other and got along," she explains, adding: "It's nothing like that now. It's changed so much, particularly over the last 15 years. It was ok at first with the students when there was just three in a house. Now we are seeing six, seven or even eight people in each house."
Like Ray and Ann, Linda stresses not all the students living in the area are bad. She added: "I had a group of girls living next door who I got on really well with and were respectful. They even bought me a nice Christmas gift. But the year before this one was an absolute nightmare. I was surrounded by loud parties going on until 7am, I couldn't escape. The rubbish and mess being left is still horrendous. The rat problems are terrible."
Linda says she has spent hours on the phone to out-of-town landlords trying to register complaints. She adds: "The landlords don't care, I have tried contacting landlords of neighbouring properties. They are in London and they just don't care about this area."
A few doors down from Linda and there are examples of those responsible students that she speaks of. Emma Neve is 20-years-old and is carefully bagging up all the rubbish from her house before she heads back down south for the summer.
She told the ECHO: "It is quite hard because some students don't have cars and so getting to the tip is hard. We've been told by our landlord that we will get charged £30 for every bin bag they have to remove. I think that's why some of the students have ended up throwing stuff in the street, but we are doing our best to take it all away.
"We haven't really had too many problems with the neighbours, there was a noise complaint at the start of the year but we didn't have any parties after that."
Further down the street Beth, Molly and Ella - all 20 - are doing a similar job. Beth says: "We try and be respectful here, it can be loud at night. We have tried to be good neighbours and haven't really had parties, if we were we would let people know who live around us."
Efforts have been made in recent years to tackle some of the issues facing long-term residents in the area. A rise in anti-social behaviour last summer saw the council, universities and police take a multi-agency approach, which included knocking on the doors of problem houses and delivering strict warnings about possible evictions. According the the long-term residents of Woodcroft Road, the noisy parties have ceased, but the rubbish and dumping has very much continued.
Speaking about the ongoing problems, Picton ward councillor and city council cabinet member for neighbourhoods, Abdul Qadir said: “Some of the issues relating to students leaving the city for summer have been disappointing to see. I know in Picton this week, the ward councillors helped fund the provision of 36 skips to mitigate the impact of the volume of waste generated by students decanting from their accommodation and for local residents to dispose of their unwanted items.
“The city council has been working as part of a multi-agency approach with the universities, councillors and MPs in the affected wards over the last year, and it's vital we all continue to collaborate and communicate. As an example the council recently distributed letters and worked with the universities to stress the importance to students of leaving Liverpool and the community they live in in a tidy manner."
Cllr Qadir said it is a 'source of frustration' that not everyone has adhered to those calls and made life 'uncomfortable' for those living in the area. He added: "What has become clear is not every landlord appears to take responsibility to help the students dispose of their rubbish properly, either by sharing details of the skips or simply helping them. That is something we are going to address with the universities support.
“On the issue of waste management I’ve instructed officers to review and strengthen plans on prevention and enforcement to ensure we tackle the recent issues more robustly. The council will also be talking to the universities to explore how we can improve communications with landlords and students to ensure the impact of this annual summer scenario is lessened.
“The council takes the management of waste extremely seriously, which is why we’ve recently announced a partnership with Keep Britain Tidy and is about to consult on installing a network of subterranean super-bins. The current status quo is not acceptable. Improvements need to be made – and they will. But the council cannot do this alone. Waste is an issue that everyone can play a part in – by reducing, reusing and recycling.”
Cllr Qadir admitted that the volume of HMOs in the area remains a concern, but added: "Since June last year the council adopted Article 4 which forces anyone looking to convert a house into a bedsit to make a planning application, and each one to date has been refused."
Any efforts to clean up the area and limit the ongoing proliferation of HMOs is welcome, but for many of the homeowners in this south Liverpool street - and many others like it - it is a case of too little, too late.
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