Willesden High Road is a far cry from the dreaming spires of Oxford, but a number of the properties on this street in Brent, north London, are owned by All Souls, one of the university’s wealthiest colleges. All Souls owns more than 300 properties in this part of London, an area where 33% of households are living in poverty.
The vast majority of the properties are residential houses, but the college also owns the freehold of the Ladbrokes branch. On Tuesday the betting shop had two customers, one watching horse racing and the other tracing his bet at a terminal. The staff declined to comment except to say they were unaware of who owned the site.
Next door, Jansan, 28, an employee at Zam’s Chicken and Pizza – where All Souls College has a leasehold – had more to say. He had been working in the shop for a couple of years but hadn’t realised the connection. “That’s unusual for a university to have so many buildings, but I suppose it’s good to have assets. They have lot of students so maybe they need it for them,” he said.
All Souls is unique in that it does not have any undergraduates: each year recent graduates and postgraduates at Oxford can apply for examination fellowships. Yet it has more than £400m in assets.
Jansan said any money Oxford made from property should go towards outreach to potential students who might not otherwise consider the university. “They probably should use the money to make the student population more diverse,” he said.
Oxford has recently faced criticism on this point. Figures show white British applicants are twice as likely to be admitted to undergraduate courses as their black British peers – 24% of the former gained entry and 12% of the latter between 2015 and 2017.
The point about diversity was echoed by Adriana, 29, working in another All Souls-owned building a few doors down. “Not everyone can afford such an elite institution … I am surprised they own so much land,” she said.
“I got a scholarship to go to university in Romania and it made a bit of a difference … Scholarships are important as people don’t always have the means and possibilities to study in Oxford. Getting a scholarship made me work a lot harder.”
The college’s extensive property portfolio in Brent includes dozens of residential properties, including a large number on Lodore Road. Frederick Murray, 67, one of those whose land is owned by the college, said: “I don’t think [All Souls] are making a lot from the freehold. I pay about £7 a year. I have nothing against Oxford in particular, lots of people make money out of property and I don’t object to that.”
His neighbour Lorain Buckle, 65, however, was less content. “My house is a leasehold so I pay the ground rent to the college every year – it’s about £8. They are not active as a landlord and operate through a company … it’s only really recently that I realised it was them that owned it,” she said.
Buckle said she had recently been finding it difficult to buy the freehold to the property because the college had not been very responsive. “I want to sell my house and wanted to buy the freehold … I’ve been trying to contact them but they’ve not got back to me.”
Like others in the area, she said any money from property or other assets should go into diversity. “Providing they [the college] put it to good use, ie the university is benefiting from it, then it’s OK,” she said. “Any money the university has should definitely be going towards getting a wider pool of applicants.”
The University of Oxford was approached for comment. Responding to a broader query about its holdings, a spokesperson said: “The central university’s strong balance sheet allows us to fund new initiatives for our students, staff, and outstanding teaching and research.”
