A category in an inaugural awards scheme for providers of student accommodation has been scrapped by the magazine Property Week after its panel of judges – students – refused to make an award.
The judges criticised institutional providers of student accommodation such as private halls of residence for charging far too much, providing the wrong sort of accommodation, and putting their shareholders first.
They said they did not want to award a single one of the entrants.
The Student Accommodation Awards, organised by Property Week and aimed at institutional providers rather than traditional student landlords, had a “Student Experience” category.
This category has now been jettisoned, just weeks before the awards bash at an upmarket hotel in central London, where other gongs will still be handed out – for example, for developer of the year – despite the painfully clear customer dissatisfaction.
The affair also raises the whole question of ‘build to rent’ investment in the private rented sector, which is being heavily Government-backed at the expense of traditional private landlords.
The student panel of judges wrote to the organisers of the awards event, to be held early next month in London, as follows:
“Dear Property Week,
We appreciate the opportunity given to us, as students, to judge the Student Experience category for the upcoming Student Accommodation Awards.
However, we regret to inform you that the panel could not come to a decision to award any of the entrants.
Unfortunately, none of the entrants could demonstrate that they are meeting the urgent need of students to live in accommodation that will not force them into poverty.
Most entrants price their cheapest rooms above the national average of £146 per week, and certainly above a level which student maintenance loans will reasonably cover. Many charge rents of more than £300 per week.
One entrant is reported for having put disabled students at great risk of danger. Another charges hundreds of pounds to act as guarantor, profiting from the discrimination of migrants and the inability of poor estranged students to provide a guarantor.
Another, in their application, puts shareholder satisfaction before student satisfaction and boasts of “£20m revenues”.
Students are not seeking luxury getaways or cinemas in our living rooms. We are not ‘satisfied’ knowing our student debt is lining the pockets of millionaire shareholders.
High rents are driving the social cleansing of education. Working class students are being priced out: unable to access higher education altogether, or forced to work long hours, disadvantaging the poorest.
We urge all providers to invest in affordable accommodation so that the future of higher education is open to all, regardless of parental income.
We urge all universities to cease the privatisation of accommodation, and to provide a guarantor service.
We urge the sector to lower profits, reduce rents and support the call for greater financial support for students in the form of universal living grants.
Unless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers.
Yours Sincerely
Student Accommodation Awards Student Judges 2016”
A spokesperson for the Student Accommodation Awards said: “The Student Experience Award is aimed at recognising student accommodation schemes that have tangibly enhanced student life.
“We completely respect the decision of the judging panel not to make an award in this category. Developers and operators of student accommodation strive to produce the very best environment for students, but our student judges have sent a clear message that the industry needs to do better.
“In light of this we have taken the decision to remove this category for this our inaugural event and review it for 2017.
“This is the first year of the Student Accommodation Awards so the limited number of categories does not fully reflect the broad range of student accommodation provided by the industry.
“Next year we will expand the awards categories and include a category for the best affordable student accommodation.
“We will continue to encourage the industry to raise its game and put the student experience at the centre of everything it does.”
One traditional landlord, Dr Rosalind Beck, said the students had made an important point.
She said: “As a licensed landlord with student housing in Cardiff, my rents average around £265 a month excluding bills and around £330 a month including bills in traditional house-shares, some of which have lovely original features and are often spacious and characterful.
“I am flabbergasted at how these institutions now think they can charge these huge rents for their allegedly ‘luxurious’ provision. As the students say, they can’t afford this luxury. They would prefer ‘cheap and cheerful,’ and to not be saddled with enormous debts.
“This is a truly awful development (misrepresented as an ‘improvement’) and will have extreme repercussions for the young people of this country.
“The problem is that the institutions may gain a monopoly as many portfolio landlords who provide the far more affordable traditional lets will be driven out of business because of having to pay huge amounts of tax on their main cost, while the institutions continue to deduct finance costs as an allowable expense (which is normal business practice).
“To make matters worse, the students might not have taken into account the fact that there is also likely to be a knock-on effect, whereby the institutions also gain dominance in the ‘young, professional let’ market, so they will have to shell out huge amounts of their salaries for years to come, thwarting any ambition to save a deposit to buy their own home and condemning them to all of the worry experienced by people facing a life in debt.
“George Osborne stated that this fiscal attack on landlords would help first-time buyers. We can all see how that was a lie.
“This Government-sponsored programme of handing institutions a monopoly in the [private rental] market must be halted immediately.”
Personally I concur with everything said by Dr Dr Rosalind Beck.
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Dr Beck has summarised the situation perfectly. George Osborne cunning use of sophistry and specious rhetoric has pulled the wool over the eyes of the general public, and has given massive tax advantages to his and the Tory’s “corporate” buddies (donors) over private Landlords. Private Landlords, like Dr Beck, have provided affordable accommodation to students, George Osborne’s #TenantTax will force up the rents, by 30-50% just to pay the extra tax, saddling students with even highers debts when they finish their courses.
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As I am someone who is currently going through the process of looking at Uni’s for my daughter we were interested to look at the accommodation on offer. Comparing the rooms that the Uni’s have to that in the private market, it was of no surprise to hear from the students that many look to move off campus having done their first compulsory year living in the Uni accommodation. It is far, far cheaper off-site!
Dr Beck is completely right, Osborne’s planned execution of the private accommodation of the student market will leave a gaping hole in many of their finances. Even more debt will be added to what they already refer to as a ‘Graduate Tax’.
I have read that Osborne is hawking himself on the American After-Dinner Speaking circuit, and is advertising himself as a ‘Social Reformer’. Never was there a truer word written! The promotion of the corporate student blocks at the detriment of the private landlord will, without a doubt, mean that many aspiring and brilliant minds will never make it to degree level.
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This is what happens when you have a provider with a captive market. Good on them for refusing to praise when it isn’t warranted. I wonder if they will announce the students reasons at the award ceremony.
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Watkin Jones launched themselves on the market and raised a big chunk of money on the back of the strength of the student accomodation sector .An increasing appetite for the end product by by the institutional investor has allowed them to build up an impressive portfolio of developments foward sold into the future Good luck to them.
Many of the schemes have the university / college guaranteeing the rental income stream who in turn oversee the letting so a little bit of a no brainer for the investor. Its a little bit different if the income stream is is guaranteed by a “management company” who will stand or fall on the success of the letting of the individual development. Higher rents being a negative and possible falling foreign student numbers too .Of course not forgetting the fightback from the Dr Becks of this world.
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Exeter with its international university is awash with new ‘corporate’ student accommodation being built throughout the city and many schemes having been completed. These are expensive rooms, many aimed at the overseas market, no parking and what do overseas, let alone UK nationals often have – that right a car.
Part of a studen experience is sharing a house with others although is it the students themselves who have lifted the bar on what they want re facilities?
Certainly saddling our students with increasing debt is a time bomb waiting to happen and slowly ticking behind the scenes that will have a devestating effect on the residential sales market. Interest rates will go up; Todays students will not be able to raise mortgages to buy properties due to their student indebtedness as their debt will be taken into account when calculating how much they can afford in repayments. Thus you have the perfect storm for a really serious collapse of the first time buyer market in the not too distant future and the ripple effect that will have further up the chains.
How much longer can the market survive with values at the levels they are with loan to value ratios – something has to give.
The demand for rented accommodation ( non student) will continue and grow unabated driven by demand ; it is no longer a stigma to rent and when the Governement simplify the unaffordable affordable housing and bring back simple ‘Council House’ availability to rent so much the better.
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I was horrified about the price when my daughter started her first year at uni and went into student accommodation. I remember, back in my misspent youth, that the university provided student digs were basically glorified shoe boxes with a communal shower room at the end of the hall. They were perfectly good enough and cheap as chips (about £150 per month inclusive in 1989) – and I’m talking central London next door to Imperial College.
My daughter was offered a generous studio flat for £953.33 per month with little or no other option. She swapped as soon as she could into a slightly more affordable and smaller studio at £801.66 per month when someone dropped out of uni.
But, whereas my digs were in central London near my college, she was on the fringes of West London a solid 30 minute tube ride to her lectures (plus walking time). I could fall out of bed into my lecture room.
Unfortunately, yet again, “education for all” has been hijacked by big business with the permission and encouragement of the government and establishment to screw us all over once more!
On a happier note (ish!) my daughter moved back home (to the south coast) and commutes to college – THAT’S MENTAL – but it’s actually cheaper and although getting on the train is a chore she can get some of her college work done whilst travelling.
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