York’s two universities are relatively recent additions to the city. York St John University is a Victorian institution originally for training teachers; the University of York was founded in Heslington in 1963.

Both build on an historic legacy of adult learning in the city, however. Since the foundation of Alcuin’s Minster School in 627AD, York has had a long tradition of welcoming scholars. This arguably reached a peak in the Middle Ages when learning was provided across several friaries and priories within the city walls including the Benedictine’s Abbey of St Mary.

Our medieval scholars may have been shocked by the cramped accommodation and exorbitant costs we charge today’s students in York. Is York becoming a problem for our students? And, if so, what should we do about it?

The rapid, recent expansion of the University of York and York St John is testament to their success. Bringing 29,000 new residents to the city, almost one in seven people in York is a higher education student. With a combined income of £445 million, the universities make up the city’s third largest public sector.

But their fast growth has resulted in large, private-sector run, purpose-built student accommodation blocks across several areas of York, with a high concentration in the Foss Islands and James Street area.

New blocks have recently been approved on the Mecca Bingo site on Fishergate (275 bedrooms) and next to the Police Station on Fulford Road (368 bedrooms).

York Civic Trust recently championed the importance of good design to complement York’s local character (How can we best preserve our city's 'Yorkness'?, January 31). But good design is also about layout and function of a building within. This is where our students’ problems begin.

York Civic Trust works with postgraduates in a partnership programme with the University of York to assess planning applications in the city. They often highlight how proposed student accommodation blocks offer very poor ‘space standards’ (i.e. small living and shared social spaces, sometimes known as ‘rabbit hutch’ accommodation).

Shockingly, there’s no legal requirement nor recommended space standards for UK student accommodation. Other types of newbuild residential housing must provide 7.5m2 as a minimum for a bedroom without ensuite. Ironically, even pet rabbit hutches have recommended space standards of 3m2 given by the RSPCA.

A recent proposed student block would have provided studio rooms where the electric hob, desk and shower could all be reached without leaving the bed. To put this in context, this would have been barely bigger than what’s legally required for single-cell inmates in UK prisons (6m2 plus more for sanitation facilities).

Student blocks can also offer poor amounts of shared, social space. ‘Cluster flats’ of up to ten small bedrooms often share a , modest communal kitchen. When there is no shared kitchen or common room, we really need to ask serious questions about students’ mental health and wellbeing.

Some of us might reminisce about university days in ‘student digs’ that barely kept the rain out, let alone the heat in. Whereas at least these were cheap options, many students living in student blocks in York today pay more than £1,000 per month. For international students arranging their accommodation,such blocks are often the only option. Is this how we should value and welcome our students?

One of the most frustrating aspects of these student blocks has been the lack of planning tools to combat the issue. Fortunately, two recent planning decisions indicate City of York Council have identified the problem. Earlier this month, the Council's Planning Committee rejected a proposal on James Street for a 319-room student block. A main reason for refusal was its ‘inadequate amount of floorspace within the proposed student bedrooms and the inadequacy of the proposed layouts’.

Further encouragement should come from the recent dismissal of a planning appeal for 86 studios on Fishergate, as ‘the proposal would not provide suitable living conditions for future occupiers’. Elected Members are beginning to stand up for York’s students and should be applauded for doing so.

This is a national problem for students, but very much in evidence here in York and perhaps exacerbated by the small, compact nature of our city.

This is not to say there’s no other housing problems in York. The starkly obvious problem is a lack of (affordable) housing. It blights the lives of our poorest communities, in particular, and forces York residents to live and work elsewhere. But two wrongs do not make a right. Would we accept such an avoidable housing-provision problem for any other sizeable minority in the city?