University of Bath - cheapest accommodation £360 per month - currently not worth 1p

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

I was recently informed of what passes for adequate accommodation at the University of Bath.

I was gob-smacked.

I think they get 13 assorted freshers to move into a three storey terraced house with painted breeze-block walls inside and out, give them a room which might be barely 10m2 (could be less judged from photos I have found) and charge them all a minimum of £360 per month - maybe forty quid more for the rooms that have a wash basin so the boys don't have to leave their room to pee apparently.

13 x £360 is £4,680 per month. Let's call it five grand with a few unofficial but formally leased personal urinals.

Peter Rachman may have been proud of such an achievement in the new millennium, had he still been alive, but he died over 50 years ago!

I was told that the only tap water that can be drunk is in the kitchen on the ground floor. How very quaint.

I also hear that Bath is hot on vaccinating all their freshers against all manner of infectious diseases (could be pretty essential given this type of accommodation I think). I also hear they have "cleanliness inspections" on set days of the week so students might try to present some semblance of a normal clean environment on at least one day a week. That's if there are leaders enough amongst them to get their collective teenage a$$ into gear.

I guess the university selects its promotional photographs from the best of those it takes on inspection days?

Nah I doubt that would do it. More likely it uses some from when these houses appeared to be less the slums they now are else they specially deep clean and decorate one for the photographer perhaps?

Who knows?

Answers on a postcard in 2063 perhaps? or will Rachman still rule ?

PS Wasn't there an MSE News article thread about University Accommodation price increases not so long ago? I couldn't find it else I may have added this news to it.

flea72

I think you will find that tap water can only be drunk from mains feed, which for the majority of households in the uk, is only available in the kitchen. Not exactly quaint, more commonplace.

£360/m is cheap for student accommodation, heck its cheap for private sector in bath, espec when you consider the housing market in that area

But, please continue with your student rants, it has been a week or two, since your last and i so needed a laugh

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

flea72 wrote: »

I think you will find that tap water can only be drunk from mains feed, which for the majority of households in the uk, is only available in the kitchen. Not exactly quaint, more commonplace.

£360/m is cheap for student accommodation, heck its cheap for private sector in bath, espec when you consider the housing market in that area

But, please continue with your student rants, it has been a week or two, since your last and i so needed a laugh

I think you'll find your quaint ideas of what is commonplace and acceptable are a couple of generations out of date. This standard would not be tolerated in any part of the private sector other than a corrupt one - accommodation for illegals or immigrant labour-gangs perhaps. Houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) are highly regulated now. Your ignorance of simple drinking water requirements is a bit worrying when you come on here and disrespect my life experience. Your grandparents might still live in a house with no mains fed cold water to upstairs taps but there is no way that will pervade if they bequeath it to you and you decide to convert it to an HMO.

Your idea of an acceptable standard is simply not good enough. Not your fault I suppose if you don't get out much. I do, and have done I suspect for considerably more years than you have since you were wet behind the ears. That is why I may not be here posting constantly and also why, when I return, I attempt to open a few eyes against the usual grain hereabouts rather than scrabbling about in the mire pretending to myself that paying through the nose must be normal or that cheap means good value or insisting that an adult expectation is too highfalutin to suggest for undergraduates.

Perhaps you need to look at this through the other end of the telescope, before you start making suggestions of what is good value. This is not accommodation that is on offer in the usual private sector although I see that bits of it seem in the past to have been good enough to advertise as casual short-term lets to tourists.

Many students do indeed club together and jointly rent houses in the private sector. They select each other for the purpose and they select the property. They do not buy tickets to enter a lottery as regards who their housemates will be nor look at houses that are advertised at £5,000 per month unless they are a cult perhaps in search of a mansion and a prayer.

They especially do not buy tickets to slum it in substandard HMO accommodation that only exists because it clearly escapes proper regulation by dint of the fact that the university seem to have gained permission to self-regulate it (else why would the wash basins not supply drinking water per HMO license rules?).

Oh and I did not mention it before, how could it possibly be hygienic to have industrial sized waste bins actually in the kitchen rather than outside?

Do you wish to add anything useful, flea72 or do you have a helpful view on rubbish too?

Browntoa

my daughter was at Bath Uni .....best time up there for her was in the 1st year freshers block

private shared rental after that

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Browntoa wrote: »

my daughter was at Bath Uni .....best time up there for her was in the 1st year freshers block

private shared rental after that

I fully understand your meaning, Browntoa, and no doubt Bath students generally can make the best of a bad lot, but as far as accommodation standards are concerned non-compliant standards must not be tolerated. If I do not hear that it has been specially improved within weeks then I myself shall simply start Googling with a little more vigour and phoning to report to the likely authorities who will jump at the chance to order what is right upon pain of sanction.

What you describe in the case of your daughter, Browntoa, is the undoubted success of many arranged marriages i.e. out of adversity and chaos surprisingly comes more order than you might at first imagine etc. Let us not forget that large numbers of Bath freshers are a cut above the countrywide norm. They are however not plumbers, electricians and deep clean specialists.

It is no thanks to the University of Bath that such people manage to make do no matter what the prevailing conditions and come through apparently unscathed. However, these are already young people of character and simply do not need the existing Bath cheap-end accommodation experience to build their character into anything more submissive.

For goodness sakes, no group of young people in their right mind would collectively rent such a run down house at five grand a month so why are they expected to pay even a penny for HMO accommodation like this in 2013 until it is put right ?

Whilst it inevitably is a pain to complain against a rental contract, especially for the first time, I honestly think all those living there should carefully check their situation versus those rules I linked to earlier in the thread (which was just a random local authority HMO link - Spelthorne in SW London), and amongst other things work out whether McDonald's-sized rubbish bins (one each for different recycling I believe) being gradually filled and stagnating for up to a week in the kitchen is a sensible and hygienic idea. A link more specific to Bath might be this one. This last one mentions properties linked to educational establishments.

Freshers in this accommodation might also work out / decide whether the university themselves as landlord should really be directly responsible for ensuring cleanliness in a house of 13 strangers each with a separate contract with the landlord. I mean who truly disinfects all the door handles, handrails, taps, behind the toilet and microwaves and work surfaces? Anyone? In our own homes we escape a great deal of infection risk because of the limited numbers and the fact that Mum or Dad is constantly reminding to wash hands etc. plus one of them is likely to be conscientiously disinfecting if they have average IQ or greater.

But, left to their own devices, what proportion of students even wash their hands properly with soap after using a toilet? Judged from adults generally seen in the workplace or in public places now generally in the UK I'd say it might barely be 10% (the 30% who turn on the tap with one hand and sprinkle water and no soap on the other do not qualify for any good-hygiene points and in fact points should be deducted for them attempting to fool themselves as well as their fellow door handle users).

In a house like this, how many of the undoubtedly above average IQ residents who will be aware of the risks might nevertheless avoid using the taps because they know they are likely to be more infected than anything else? So what do they do? return to their room where they have no wash basin and give their hands a squirt of disinfectant gel?

What I am told is that the expected regime here might be one where there will be some kind of natural leadership or pack-mentality development as part of the freshers' collective initiative test. Others ther and here will I am sure be thinking it is all simply part of "normal student life" and that whatever standard of collective bed-making emerges as the norm for any particular bunch of housemates will become the standard of the bed they collectively will then lie in for the next 40 weeks.

From what I can tell after a few weeks of bedding in, all this regime achieves is a slum standard. It won't do. That major error should be prosecuted against the managers of the HMO who are not the students but the university.

Whilst few of the freshers will be hardened, seasoned MSE'ers with the experience of laying down the law in contractual matters, if they can see that those HMO regs are being busted, then the freshers should immediately demand a full refund of all rent until full compliance with the regs is achieved by the university.

If the potable water problem is true, because there is no direct mains fed cold water other than to the kitchen/ground floor, then the "don't drink the water from the washbasins" thing especially just shows what a penny-pinching opportunistic irresponsible landlord the university is right now.

So you Bath HMO accommodation "managers", how much are you actually coining in total per month from the slum end of your accommodation offering? That's the part which no doubt you don't wish to spend much money on because it might be pulled down in a year or two. I recall that your institution's name has been mentioned here on MSE previously and not in a good light with regard to student accommodation. That put me on enquiry. We are watching now. These are young people you are exploiting with your freshly unbridled new profit motives and repayment plan 2 Tuition Fee/Bursary Cashback/Maintenance Loan supported accommodation businesses. There's a whole lot more student debt cash to be cornered now, is there not? Be careful how you go about it, please.

I urge that someone had better check all this out tomorrow and sharpen up the act down there on the frayed edges of the quintessentially English Cotswolds ... there's nothing quintessentially English about slum accommodation anymore thanks.

[Deleted User]

A quick look on rightmove shows there is accommodation available ranging from £69 pppw up to over £400 pppw

I thought it was a right-of-passage to live in a crappy house at university? Blimey, in my day we paid £42 a week to live next to a crack-den in Toxteth. We had the heating break for 2 weeks during a pretty cold northern winter. It taught you that you wanted to live somewhere nicer, so it would be a good idea to work a bit harder at uni. And also move to a nicer city. And how to negotiate with landlords for discounts

TurnUpForTheBooks- you may want to get to the point quicker and lose the verbosity. No one wants to read your 900 word entries.

I had a bit of a further search. Campus accommodation starts at £60 a week (shared)- http://www.bath.ac.uk/study/ug/accommodation/types/campus/

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Don't need any lecture on verbosity thanks - I communicate effectively. My business here is not to make for easy reading but to slam home a point of order and I have no doubt whatsoever that those who need to take good heed of the thread are already doing so.

Right of passage? I don't think anyone wants to hear what benefit to society you think you might mean by that.

PS The £60 a week is for 2 in the same room. I think that is probably how they get 13 into a small 3 storey house. But as I now say in the title, even a penny is too much right now until they improve it to an acceptable standard. Even within 20 minutes walk of Canary Wharf in London in places where bankers live, you won't find landlords taking five grand a month for a house that size.

[Deleted User]

You waffle and fail to get to the point. its what writing essays teaches you.

Amazingly, you've discovered that an expensive town has expensive rent. Student rent will obviously not be the same as regular 'grown up' rent. To start with, there's more associated risk to deal with for a landlord. Dealing with multiple clients will be far more hassle. You want cheaper, find a town without a Roman bath. Maybe you fancy renting out of the city and travelling in

Yes, the £60 room is shared, but you get your own for £88. Looks nearly identical to my first year room in halls. You do really seem to want to vent, so feel free to carry on. I'm sure that my 5 minutes of googling didn't show the full trouble and strife of student accommodation.

atypical

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Don't need any lecture on verbosity thanks - I communicate effectively.

"what proportion of students even wash their hands properly with soap after using a toilet?"

You wrote this in response to someone who posted that their daughter enjoyed living in Bath's freshers block.

agrinnall

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Don't need any lecture on verbosity thanks - I communicate effectively.

You do, and you don't. There you are, not verbose, but still effective.

red40

I dont agree with prescribed University establishments self regulating themselves, to use the old saying 'turkeys dont vote for Christmas' you only have to have a look at the complaints procedure for either ANUK or UUK to see the complaints procedure is basically.... contact the Univesity to complain about the University accommodation. Should that not work you can then contact the Local Authority.

I come across to many 'prescribed establishments' that fall short of the requirements of the current HMO Regulations, however local authorities are prevented from enforcing the very regulations due to University accommodation being exempt from being HMO's, Only Part 1; (Housing Conditions (HHSRS)) of the Housing Act 2004 can be implemented.

Just on another point regarding drinking water, the current requirement is that at least one tap provides adequate drinking water, local authorities can ask for more but would since that is a documented in the HHSRS Operating Guidance anything over and above that would fail any enforcement action.

HTH