MAY I tell Phillip Lickey (Unfair to students, Letters, May 3) what it is like living next to students in our area? For us it means a very changed area.

A lot of our properties have the "run-down" look now - very untidy gardens, curtains which look as if they are dropping to bits, etc. Students also mean loud music and parties.

We are lucky in that the six female students next to us in our terrace are very pleasant, don't seem to care for loud music, but they warned us about a party to take place on Saturday, April 29.

They are entitled to a life as much as we are, so we moved our bedroom for the night to the other side of the house.

But, at 2.45am on Sunday, April 30, the party was still in the garden, with the participants bellowing a conversation from the garden to the occupants of the first-floor windows! Surprise, surprise, we were trying to sleep!

Last year we had a party-noise problem with the then student-occupiers of the house, which the University very quickly and efficiently sorted out for us.

We may live on a main road, but this is still a quiet residential area.

The properties are occupied by people who love their homes, have no desire to move and were in the properties before the students arrived.

No-one around here would subscribe to the idea that living near students is fun.

Sheila Thornton

Lawrence Street, York.

Updated: 09:29 Monday, May 08, 2006