How would you feel if you were asked to continue paying rent for student accommodation which you’d already left? Even worse, if the people advising you to leave and the people directing you to keep paying, were one and the same? That’s the stressful situation facing thousands of students who’ve followed their university’s advice and gone home to be with their families, only to be told that next term’s rent is due shortly.
One of these students is Georgie, 20, a first year at Nottingham Trent University:
“I’m still in first year living in halls and I first got an email when uni shut saying: ‘please let us know if you’re leaving but be aware that you’re still under contract for the year’. Then I went and packed the rest of my things up over the weekend and went to hand my keys in. I asked them if I still had to pay rent or if they could subsidise it because I obviously won’t be using electricity/water etc and they said no, we still have to pay the full amount!”
Georgie went on to say: “even if they just halved it or something I’d be happy”. During our conversation she even received an email from her university encouraging students to vacate halls and go back to their permanent homes if possible. But the email didn’t say anything about reducing the rent.
Meanwhile Georgie’s sister, a student at the University of Essex, was told that none of them has to pay rent for the remainder of the year. Georgie said, “it’s unfair that some people do and others don’t.”
The situation is changeable, to say the least. Residential Life here at the University of East London had told me that even though I moved out weeks ago I would have to pay the full rent for the summer term, amounting to £2200. I’d signed a contract, they said, which remained legally binding. Thankfully, I’ve since been told I can be released from my contract early, on payment of a £50 change of contract fee. This is better than what was said before, but still seems unfair on students who may need every pound they have to help back home.
While recognising that the situation is unprecedented, surely we could expect a coordinated response from universities nationwide. We are in a nationwide lock down, after all. So come on, vice-chancellors everywhere, please agree a policy to waive student rent for the rest of the year (without any financial penalty), and implement this policy without delay.
Otherwise it makes it difficult to believe what you say about the welfare of students being your top priority.
