Late night shopping last week in John Lewis, and by seven o’clock the queue at the tills in the kitchen department reached as far as the vacuum cleaners. I brought up the rear, clutching a cut-price bread bin discounted, no doubt, to tempt the purchasers ahead of me who were, without exception, all students.

The buzz was uplifting as youngsters prowled the aisles searching for basics to set themselves up at the start of term. The influence of Bake-Off and MasterChef was obvious. In my day all you needed was an egg whisk and a couple of saucepans. Now piping bags, brulée blowtorches and meat thermometers are deemed essentials.

Only the most churlish would deny that seeing young folk setting out on their first years of independence is cheering. It creates a sense of vicarious pleasure, along with a host of happy memories of those giddy early days of being away from a regulatory parental eye.

Needless to say, of course, all feelings of benevolence would evaporate if a group of party-loving students moved into the flat upstairs or the house next door. And that, sadly, is an increasingly common problem, especially in old historic university towns such as St Andrews.

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Back in 2018, one St Andrews resident complained that, “if it carries on like this we’re not going to have a town left.” At that point, students numbered around 9000 whilst the local population was about 7000, a drop of 40% since the 1990s. Today in Durham, the student population of almost 22,000 is a only a whisker short of the town, at 23,000.

With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that in some places the overwhelming dominance of student accommodation is causing a housing crisis. Indeed, it’s not surprising that one of the dread words of recent years is “studentification”.

It is not my intention to sound anti-youth. As most of us know from experience, it takes time to grow into a responsible domesticated adult, and to think about the impact of your behaviour (ie parties and omitting to empty the bins) on those you live alongside. Yet there is no disputing the distress a phalanx of students in the neighbourhood can cause. In the wake of exponentially rising numbers entering further education, entire city centres or districts are effectively being turned into student quarters.

In Glasgow, when we had a flat in the Merchant City, we saw the area transformed by the proliferation of university accommodation: student halls of residence, rented flats on all sides, and streets so empty in the dog days of summer a plane could have taxied along them without harming a soul.

As my husband liked to say, there was nowhere to buy a carrot. This wasn’t strictly true, but there was certainly a dearth of shops that cater for regular consumers: butchers, bakers, greengrocers or hardware stores. Of coffee shops, clubs and cocktail bars, of course, there was an abundance. Nor is it just in the Merchant City that it’s an issue. Across the city there are student-dominated zones, such as in the west end or around Charing Cross, which impact on the balance and atmosphere of the community.

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Naturally, it’s worse in small cities, where residents can feel outnumbered and even intimidated. One elderly woman in Durham, Jackie Levitas, a poet, eventually could no longer stand it. The last remaining non-student resident on her street in the city centre, in 2017 she finally, after 40 years in her beloved home, sold up and moved to another area.

She said: “It wasn’t just the noise and mess. When the students were away it was like a ghost town. No lights on in silent streets. The local economy suffered. Very few local shops or services. They closed. Instead, there were takeaways, small supermarkets, bars, coffee shops. There is a real fear that people have when a student house opens next door to them, because of what it brings in its wake.”

In Edinburgh, meanwhile, entire streets have been turned into student-land. Pity the house hunter who buys a flat in Marchmont near the Meadows, unaware they might as well be living in the David Hume Tower. Over the years more than a few friends and family have been obliged to leave this district, unable to get a good night’s sleep, or troubled by fleas, bedbugs and rodents.

In Durham and elsewhere, steps are now being taken to limit the number of HMOs (houses of multiple occupation). Once 10% of a location is made up of HMOs, no more are allowed. Finally, and thankfully, there is a sense that the flood is being stemmed.

Such restrictions will make a big difference, but they have come rather too late for those like Jackie Levitas. And the hollowing out of communities is difficult to reverse, especially when it causes significant changes that impact on ordinary folk, such as a lack of shops or an escalation in house prices that means only investors can afford to buy.

In a metropolis like London students are absorbed without creating tensions. That, however, is rare. So widespread is the problem, indeed, there should be a concerted effort on the part of universities to help defuse antagonism and angst, and find ways of resolving the pressures that townsfolk – effectively their hosts – find intolerable. In the words of the academic James Derounian, who lectures on community governance, “Surely a key part of any overarching university strategic plan should emphasise the import of being a good neighbour and enabling local communities and residents to achieve the goals they pursue?”

The responsibility for solving this issue falls squarely on the academic community. Of course their presence brings enormous benefits to the local area, but at considerable and increasingly unsustainable cost. Finding ways of bridging the town and gown divide, of becoming more involved with the permanent population and listening to their concerns is crucial. Perhaps educating students in how to be good citizens would be a start, as would having a hotline within the university for residents unhappy with their scholarly neighbours.

The problem will not be quickly solved, but steps must be taken soon. Otherwise, the character of a city that first attracted young folk will disappear altogether, turning the whole place into a campus where ordinary mortals dare not tread and students are kettled with each other.