IN the Argus article headed How local authority keeps control of student housing (June 24) Councillor Anne Meadows said; “There are clear regulations that make us able to ensure that neighbourhoods will maintain their residential characteristics.”

Councillor Meadows is already too late. North Laine now has more students than residents. The number of students in the area around Elm Grove has made the area unfit for families and long time residents.

Circus Street has planning permission for 460 student rooms bringing unacceptable noise levels and loss of light to many of the residents of the Milner flats.

Abraham Baldry, president of the University of Sussex Students’ Union, claims that most students are considerate neighbours but this is not the experience of many residents.

Both universities in Brighton are planning to expand by several thousand students.

Now Abraham tells us that many graduates do not want to move away once they have completed their studies.

Brighton and Hove already has a serious housing shortage with many thousands of families on the housing waiting list, so where will these graduates live?

Many letters to the Argus oppose building on the urban fringe, yet Brighton and Hove desperately needs more dwellings, particularly affordable houses, but under the ‘right to buy’ these are just the affordable dwellings we are set to lose.

Selma Montford, Clermont Road, Brighton