Accomodation Fines. Rights?

tomclowes

Hey guys,

I have a query with regards to fines.

I am at university, staying in student accommodation. It was a mates birthday, and thus a flat party was arranged, posters stuck up etc.

In our accommodation contract it clearly states that parties must have written consent from a warden, we did not have this.

We were told to cancel the party, and turn people away. We did this. We kept noise to a respectable level (in our eyes), and had 10, 15 mates maximum in the room. Given what it could have been it was extremely tame.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is everyone in attendance at the party is being fined.

One of my mates cited the Consumer Protection Act: apparently contracts cannot hand out fines, otherwise the other party could fine a person as/where they please.

What are our rights here? We all signed the accommodation contract (can be seen by googling "leeds accommodation contract terms")

Any help would be appreciated.
Tom

Smidster

What is the fine for - was there any damage done?

tomclowes

Not to sure... there was absolutely no damage.

The flat was really messy, but we did explain we clean up every morning (which is true).

The only applicable fine on the webpage is for excessive noise... and we do not think it was anywhere near excessive...

Thx

Smidster

Personally I doubt you have a leg to stand on.

If the contract says you need to have written permission to hold a party and you have a party without such permission (and 15 people I would certainly classify as a party) then you are asking for trouble

dmg24

I am confused - you said that you cancelled the party, but there was still noise/ a mess etc?

tomclowes

As in rather than anyone, and everyone turning up (potentially upwards of 100 people), we turned people away and it was just good friends chilling and celebrating a birthday...

Smidster

You were going to have 100 people in a student flat...madness.

Sorry but you have to look at the facts here.

They say you can't have a party - you had one
The flat was a tip
You claim there was no noise - Any proof of that (15 people will make more noise than you appreciate)

olly300

You have not stated what evening of the week this party or gathering occurred.

If it occurred on a Friday or Saturday evening and it wasn't university exam time then you have some hope of winning your case by appealing if you argue it wasn't anti-social behaviour.

You need to be able also to argue that:
1. Everyone who lived in the accommodation on that floor or that flat was invited and attended unless they were not present for a good reason i.e. they were away at their parents.

2. That the noise was down by 10pm and off by 11pm. Unfortunately you need to find out if any of your neighbours complained. And by any that includes people who can hear you but don't live in the same accommodation.

If all of these don't apply then unfortunately you are going to have to pay up.

Anti-social behaviour covers a wide range of behaviour including noise, and leaving a mess in shared parts of accommodation if you have individual contracts.

Universities which act as landlords just like councils and housing associations are allowed to have different contracts by law, to a private individual or company who acts as a landlord.

ultimatedingbat

You can appeal. SOmething similar happened to me last year when I was some friends around for an Anne Summers party. I had the girls from my society around which came to 17 in total including myself, and my fellow flat mates and the people on the floor with me.
Security came up at around 9.30pm saying they'd had a noise complaint, and even they admitted they couldn't hear anything. The girls, bar 6 who stayed he night, were all gone by 10.30pm.
My contract said we needed permission to hold a PUBLIC party. I argued that this was not a "party" in the traditional sense, and was a private gathering with select friends, we also could argue on grounds of a society meeting, which we didn't need permission for. As the security came up at 9.30p,m it was before the 10pm noise "silent time" so they had no leg to stand on.
As long as you cleaned your own mess, and you were reasonably quiet, you should be ok.

tomclowes

Cheers for the info, extremely informative.

Fire_Fox

Pay the fines and learn from the experience - you have just learned the first lesson of being an adult, actually you can't do what you want, when you want without consequences.