What type of info do you want?

This was on my daughter's list of possibilities.

What do you want to know ?

Plenty of info on the Kingston University website.

As a local, the best advice I can offer any young fresher is 'be careful out there'. Kingston is is chav mecca.

As another local I would disgree about it being a chav mecca. I have 3 teenagers who spend a lot of time in Kingston in the evenings. They and their friends are certainly not chavs! They have several friends at the uni. There are 2 nightclubs one of which is supposed to be the biggest in Europe and plenty of pubs and restaurants. Kingston is a pretty multi-cultural place and as long as your son is sensible he will be fine and I'm sure he will enjoy his time there.

English Rose, not suggesting for one minute that everyone in Kingston is a chav. Your teenagers sound like well adjusted folks, just like mine!

But having lived in Kingston for the past twenty years, there is no doubting that the quality of life has taken a serious turn for the worse, and there is an air of menace and intimidation about the place. It's a lot of things, from the flotsam and jetsam attracted to Kingston's nightlife; the (often multi-cultural) gangs of muggers preying on young kids during the day; the wretched drugs trade around the Kaleidoscope drug-rehab centre which leaves a trail of crime all around that end of Kingston.

I'd like to be more positive about the place. It saddens me to see the plight of Kingston, a town that has sold out to shopping and chavvie nightlife (why should we have to run the gauntlet of hoodie thugs every time we visit the Rotunda to see a film?). Hopefully with the impending opening of the theatre, there'll be something for local rate payers who seek enrichment beyond shopping and low-grade nightlife.

Hi,

I came to Kingston uni in 1999 from Bognor Regis and the culture shock and learning curve was steep. I still live nearby all these years later though.

I found the atmosphere almost inherently aggressive because of the mix in cultures in the area. However, there's loads of club choice with Oceana, Works, MacKluskeys and some excellent pub life, live music, comedy pubs etc. Brilliant shopping and Rotunda is a student dream. If anything i found the Union bars the most unfriendly, so we spent most of our time socialising in "locals" pubs and meeting the more permanent residents of Kingston/Surbiton.

Really Really friendly people outside the main town, however even at 26 i don't feel comfortable walking through Kingston after ten on my own.

Number one piece of advice is keep clear of the river, especially because there aren't many rails to stop those tipsy folk falling in.

With two teenage kids who are regular (and peaceable) habituees of Kingston in the evening, I am on tenderhooks until they return home unscathed.

And even in the reasonably nice residential zone we live in, there's the regular menace of ASBO'd kids (including some exceptionally violent young ladies) from the local estate routinely intimidating other youngsters as they pass through the railway station. In addition, there's the local multi-cultural gangs (yes, you can watch the pathetic rabble bigging themselves up on youTube) which inflict an extra layer of intimidation across the town. Talk to any local head teacher about gang recruitment in the playground.

Yup, now unless you live in some privileged bubble up on Kingston Hill, this is everyday life in modern Kingston, one of the most pleasant/affluent , and allegedly 'low crime' boroughs in London.

I'm no sociologist, but I guess all the ills we see in our hometown are borne out of the same influences that have turned so much of the rest of this country into a rathole.

But, I keep on living in the place. Guess it's a love/hate relationship! And I'd be the first to accept that my view on the place will be very different to a younger person's, many of whom enjoy the nightlife and the buzz - and most of whom are streetwise enough to avoid the less civic minded elements.