Why SHOULD our students pay for digs they can’t use?
THE closure of university campuses in response to the coronavirus has not stopped a number of big corporate providers of student accommodation – and private landlords – from demanding full rent from tenants for their final term.
This is despite the vast majority of students having followed university advice, gone back to their parents, and not returned for the summer term.
The hard-nosed financial approach of these companies has been condemned by MPs, university officials, student representatives and parents.
Two weeks ago, The Mail on Sunday highlighted the plight of students who rent rooms through The Student Housing Company, a provider of accommodation countrywide – from Edinburgh to Plymouth in the South West.
Initially, students were told they would be liable for their full thirdterm rent. But the company has since waived 50 per cent of the fees and given students and their parents more time to pay up. At selected universities, presumably under pressure from university officials, the company – owned by GSA – has waived all fees.
Yet, according to readers with children or grandchildren taking university degrees, GSA’s The Student Housing Company is not the only offender.
Although some others such as Unite Students, iQ and Gravis (manager of investment trust GCP Student Living that owns a portfolio of student blocks, primarily in London) have done the right thing and waived all third-term rental fees, some have played hardball.
In several instances, companies have refused to offer any waiver, arguing that they are merely enforcing the contracts students signed up to at the beginning of the academic year – and that students have received money from their maintenance loans to meet the bills. They include Host and Mansion Student, both nationwide providers of student accommodation.
Others, such as Fresh Student Living, part of Fresh Property Group, have offered ten per cent discounts and given students and parents more time to pay the fees.
Some parents have been left frustrated trying to get rents waived. Cathy Clough (name changed) has had no joy in getting Mansion Student – ‘specialists in student accommodation’ – to waive the third-term rent that is payable on her 19-yearold daughter’s vacant accommodation at Durham University.
IT HAS refused to release her daughter from the contract she signed last year, stating the coronavirus outbreak is no excuse for rent to go unpaid. Cathy has paid, but is disappointed by Mansion Student’s ‘lack of compassion’. Last week, The Mail on Sunday asked Mansion Student – whose marketing message is ‘we listen, we care, we deliver’ – to comment. It failed to come back with a response. Andrew Sturmey has a daughter at Liverpool John Moores University. Until forced to go home to complete her studies – she is in the final year of her chemistry degree – Rosie was staying in accommodation provided by Fresh Student Living. Despite her handing back the keys, the company has only been willing to offer a ten per cent discount and payment made in three instalments rather than in one lump sum. Her dad has advised his daughter to make the payments so she does not end up with a black mark on her credit record. But he is disappointed that Fresh Student Living has not been more generous.
On Friday, Fresh Property Group said it was not the landlord of the accommodation in question – Calico, situated off campus – but just the manager responsible for collecting rent. It said Calico’s landlord had also been ‘financially distressed’ as a result of Covid-19 and had ‘gone above and beyond its capabilities to support students at this time’.
Another parent to contact The Mail on Sunday has two daughters at university – one at Cambridge and the other at Warwick. While the former has seen her university-provided accommodation fees for the summer term waived, her sister has not been so lucky. Although she arranged her year’s digs through Warwick Accommodation, an arm of the university, she was told that because her tenancy is with a thirdparty landlord, she is liable for the term’s rent of £1,500.
Fellow students living on campus have had their fees waived. Warwick Accommodation will not provide the family with details of the landlord so that they can press them to play fair. The only action available so far has been to ‘open’ a complaint with Warwick Accommodation.
On Friday, the girls’ father told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There must be some common sense applied here. It is morally unfair to expect our students (or their parents) to pay an entire term’s rent without being able to use the house or attend the university’.
Tiana Holgate, welfare and campaigns officer at Warwick Students’ Union, describes the required payment of third-term rent as a ‘national crisis for student renters’.
Although accepting that, legally, students must adhere to the rental agreement they signed up to, she says it ‘simply isn’t fair for students to have to pay for accommodation which will be vacant through no fault of their own – and effectively as mandated by the UK Government – as no one could have predicted the current situation when signing their housing contracts’.
Local Labour MPs Matt Western (who represents Warwick and Leamington) and Zarah Sultana (who represents Coventry South) have written to all local letting agencies and landlords, urging them to do the right thing.
They want them to offer no-penalty releases from contracts for the rest of the current academic year – and the next academic year if necessary.
Students’ landlords need lesson in fairness