Nottingham: '70 per cent of the students I knew were burgled'

The district in which students rent rooms in Nottingham is surrounded by an area of deprivation and high unemployment, according to Lewis Proudfoot, 24, a Nottingham graduate. This explains why students there are so vulnerable to crime. In his first year, Proudfoot lived in a self-catered flat. He had a window smashed but no one was able to enter because of the bars on the windows. In his final two years he lived in Kimbolton Avenue, which became notorious for crime. He was not burgled during this time, but someone did break in to his car. After graduation, he moved to an area on the edge of the city and again became a victim of crime when a burglar entered his house. He moved back in to the student zone and once more found himself the victim of a burglary. But he never felt unsafe in the city, he says.

Beka Diski, 22, another Nottingham graduate, says that everyone talked about crime because at that time the city had become famous for gun crime. "But coming from London I never felt unsafe," she says. "It's quite hard to feel that Nottingham is more dangerous than London. I was never burgled, but 70 per cent of the people I knew were."

I was never burgled, but 70 per cent of the people I knew were."