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

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Thanks red40. I feared I might be right with my guess on self-regulation. However I see Somerset have gone a little further with their guidance as linked to in my earlier post. See p.31 of that document:

Category C Houses:
Houses with some degree of shared facilities, occupied by people whose accommodation is ancillary to their ... education and is made available through ... or in connection with a recognised educational establishment.

On p. 33/34 it says:

Water Supply
Each bedroom should be provided with an adequate supply of cold running water suitable for drinking purposes. This should normally be from the rising main.

Where this is not practicable, such supply may be provided at a tap on each floor but not in a bathroom or water closet.

The supply is to be sited over a sink or wash hand basin.

As for those who would rather discuss my style than the thread topic, do please note that my posts are no attempt at any essay as for submission as part of a soft degree.

This is said as it is commentary on the errant ways of commercial interests who need pulling down a peg or two.

If anyone wishes to stand in the middle and try call the shots, or belittle or defuse the seriousness of the thread topic then be my guest. It makes little difference to the effectiveness of the thread and I'm not into developing any fan club.

What many of you conveniently seem to overlook is that we who went to UK universities as members of earlier generations were not daily and routinely exposed to ruthless businesses and corrupt government finance schemes.

Most of the matters referred to in thread topics in this part of MSE's forums are no joke. If you think twice before you write to belittle criticisms of these businesses but still get the urge to continue, then please think twice more.

ringo_24601 wrote:

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.

Quite. Looks can be deceiving - see my suggestion that promotional photographs may be misleading in the first post. You won't know what to Google if your experience is only that of being a renter or a visitor so your 5 minutes may have been wasted.

My experience includes that of assessing property and liability risks, property management and compliance. I do not "vent" lightly but I vent often as there is quite a lot that needs venting about in the "way we treat our students" domain !

[Deleted User]

So post some photos then. And FYI, I was at university 11 years ago and yes, the did appear to have gone to town building accommodation last time I was in Liverpool.

I can't wait to hear you rant when you see the prices of houses after graduation..

I was struck by how you phrased your original post. It does seem like you post on the basis of a lot of second hand information. That is at least how you present your long-winded argument

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

ringo_24601 wrote: »

So post some photos then. And FYI, I was at university 11 years ago and yes, the did appear to have gone to town building accommodation last time I was in Liverpool.

I can't wait to hear you rant when you see the prices of houses after graduation..

I was struck by how you phrased your original post. It does seem like you post on the basis of a lot of second hand information. That is at least how you present your long-winded argument

I know the price of houses, ringo as I have bought and rented a number since graduation and follow the London auctions

And if you think my information looks too second-hand, then go take a look for yourself / grab some photos yourself, or call the university and ask whether they think I might have a valid point or two.

Long-winded or not, you still seem to be giving it your thought, so that's just what the doctor ordered :money:

amiehall

I would say that when I lived in similar halls in my first year (I shared a big kitchen with 20 people), we had a cleaner that dealt with the kitchen, bathrooms, corridors etc. 4 days a week so your concerns about some new diseases developing inside the block are probably unfounded.

mountainofdebt

well the other side of the coin is the state that some students treat their accommodation.

I soon learnt that to go into the communal kitchen in Junior's accommodation (sharing with only 7 other students) last year was a no-no ......not because of the state that they were given it but the state that the students themselves left in it....there's no way on this planet would they treat the kitchen back home like they did that kitchen.....in fact it was such a state when we went to move Junior out at the end of the year I told him I didn't care if all of them had moved back, if I was the authorities I'd be writing to their parents, demanding that they came back and sorted it out.

Oh and that was nothing compared to his room but there I could at least hand him the cleaner and tell him to sort it out........2 emptying later his room was passable.

No students are not the little hard done by angels you seem to think they are

paddyrg

For what it's worth, you want the B&NES standards, Somerset is irrelevant.

I live in Bath in private rental accommodation. It's expensive, old and cold. Even friends with very glamorous places in the Circus etc., have the same problems. Properties in town cost a lot to heat and are not huge for the money you pay. And its not as convenient as being near campus. It's never going to be as comfortable as staying at your parents house. If that's your only reference, a year or two in private accommodation may make the grass seem less green.

By all means lobby to get improvements, but realise it's actually quite cheap for a very expensive city, close to campus, water rates and council tax included (and bills? I can't imagine a 13-way bill split would work easily!). Or earn more money and get somewhere new and nice - but be prepared for £1000+/month rent plus all the usual extras.

I agree that waffling on dilutes, not improved your impact.

pinkteapot

Why pick on Bath? Sounds like the Halls of Residence at most universities... And exactly like mine in my first year at Oxford.

I work for a university now and it sounds like the cheaper-end of the ones we offer. We have a range of Halls, from 1960s-built to newly-built, with varying facilities and prices to match. Students can choose which they live in based on their budget. Much like housing in the real world.

bathmathsuser

I'm a second year student at Bath, lived in halls last year. Yes, I went with the second most expensive but that was only for the ensuite facilities. If I hadn't got that chances are I would have asked for Westwood (which appears to be the one you're moaning about).

They're the cheapest for a reason: because they're basic. I don't know where you expect us to get a drink from that isn't the kitchen, and I don't know why you feel any of this is any of your business anyway. But for £85 a week (or at least, it was last year) you get access to showers, toilets, a pretty big kitchen, a decent-sized room and a good sense of community. And if you're ok with sharing a room you get all that for even less! You could definitely do worse.

Rooms get cleaned regularly in cycles, so it'll work from Wolfson (say) along to Quantock and then go back to Wolfson again. Kitchens get done weekly. They note if we're not washing up or keeping halls clean and can fine us if we don't clear up after ourselves. So I don't know where you get the idea that everyone's got the bubonic plague from.

flea72

bathmathsuser wrote: »

I'm a second year student at Bath, lived in halls last year. Yes, I went with the second most expensive but that was only for the ensuite facilities. If I hadn't got that chances are I would have asked for Westwood (which appears to be the one you're moaning about).

They're the cheapest for a reason: because they're basic. I don't know where you expect us to get a drink from that isn't the kitchen, and I don't know why you feel any of this is any of your business anyway. But for £85 a week (or at least, it was last year) you get access to showers, toilets, a pretty big kitchen, a decent-sized room and a good sense of community. And if you're ok with sharing a room you get all that for even less! You could definitely do worse.

Rooms get cleaned regularly in cycles, so it'll work from Wolfson (say) along to Quantock and then go back to Wolfson again. Kitchens get done weekly. They note if we're not washing up or keeping halls clean and can fine us if we don't clear up after ourselves. So I don't know where you get the idea that everyone's got the bubonic plague from.

The OP likes to twist irrelevant information to prove a point. Since student accomm is similar to HMOs in layout, he feels the same rules/regs should apply. ie access to drinking water within room, not just kitchen

Or that because a uni has advised its students to get immunised means that the conditions there are unsanitary. Nothing to do with the fact that migration of students is causing students to be exposed to many more new strains they havent built resistance to yet, or lack of MMR as youngster, due to autism link means it is on the rise.

For some reason, as yet not explained, the OP has a grudge with anything to do with Universities. Be it reading lists, tuition fees and now quality/cost of accommodation. All information they provide is hearsay and as you say, bathmasuser, has diddly squat to do with the OP. If students and parents werent prepared to pay for that accommodation, then they would vote with their feet, but it seems most students accept you dont go to uni, just to have a sink that you can !!!! and drink in and if you do want that, you pay extra for the privilege

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

bathmathsuser wrote: »

I'm a second year student at Bath, lived in halls last year. Yes, I went with the second most expensive but that was only for the ensuite facilities. If I hadn't got that chances are I would have asked for Westwood (which appears to be the one you're moaning about).

They're the cheapest for a reason: because they're basic. I don't know where you expect us to get a drink from that isn't the kitchen, and I don't know why you feel any of this is any of your business anyway. But for £85 a week (or at least, it was last year) you get access to showers, toilets, a pretty big kitchen, a decent-sized room and a good sense of community. And if you're ok with sharing a room you get all that for even less! You could definitely do worse.

Rooms get cleaned regularly in cycles, so it'll work from Wolfson (say) along to Quantock and then go back to Wolfson again. Kitchens get done weekly. They note if we're not washing up or keeping halls clean and can fine us if we don't clear up after ourselves. So I don't know where you get the idea that everyone's got the bubonic plague from.

Well your post might well illustrate how much you think you know that you don't, bathmathuser ! Might it all be a bit easy for you to say from your esteemed position of having last year sampled the second most expensive offering ?! For a start, you might note that cleaning the cheapest doesn't happen if you look at the price offer schedule - i.e. like yours, something with cleaning is a different building with a different offer. I have no doubt there is a strong sense of community. Thank goodness for it when everyone drops like flies with the same bugs! Community arises out of people power, not buildings, and is hardly something you pay for with your rent money - at least not until you buy into Royal Crescent perhaps! By the way, your views are not a reflection of the views of the Student Union I hope?

pinkteapot wrote: »

Why pick on Bath? Sounds like the Halls of Residence at most universities... And exactly like mine in my first year at Oxford.

I work for a university now and it sounds like the cheaper-end of the ones we offer. We have a range of Halls, from 1960s-built to newly-built, with varying facilities and prices to match. Students can choose which they live in based on their budget. Much like housing in the real world.

Ask yourself why you allow yourself the luxury of thinking it is still good enough, pinkteapot. This is not at all like housing in the real world. It is slum accommodation that I have no doubt would be illegal in the real world irrespective of the renters budget, and I have my doubts about the legality of it even with the concessionary status the university might have to self-regulate its housing standards. So why do you think you should be suggesting otherwise? Do you develop or maintain standards for the benefit of society? Why not try it?

As for my attempt, I caught a suggestion in an earlier thread that Bath was overly expensive, and unfortnately for them I now know enough about Bath to complain strongly, so that is why Bath gets it in the neck in this thread. If a few more people woke up and stood up and insisted on European standards then we might have cause to claim our universities were still top notch. On this form they ain't.

And paddyrg, I approached this initially with my own personal standards dictating my thoughts, but thanks for the pointer to Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) standards as might or might not exist. A specific search of the bathnes.gov.uk website for anything containing the phrase "drinking water" indicates that they have barely scratched the surface since the Romans left, except for example when they decided they needed to consider licensing some applicant who wanted to dump asbestos perilously close to aquifers or the river where it might contaminate drinking water supplies generally. I note at least one student wrote to object, but with the state of some student accomodation in Bath, one wonders whether asbestos risks might already be closer to home than that student realised. Even if commonplace, I doubt you'd find much in the public domain about it in this city.

If the search is narrowed to include any of the words "HMO", "multiple occupation", "shared accommodation", or shared occupation", then there are essentially no pertinent hits. Perhaps you might agree that is a dire situation. It seems to have passed that authority by that humans need clean drinking water to survive without risk of constant illnesses.

You say that Somerset standards are irrelevant but I think what you mean is that irrespective of what guidelines Somerset CC may have issued to B&NES, B&NES might get away with being a law unto themselves, or with doing nothing?

My waffling on clearly doesn't seem to stop readers commenting. Your particular take on the pervading rental climate in Bath is offered like you might think it serves as some kind of justification for a continuing university accommodation rip-off up on Claverton Down. It isn't.

Bath has in the Claverton down campus an almost 50 year established UK university which somehow has transformed itself lately into one with a notably flakey accommodation business sideline - one which so obviously exploits a captive market already paying through the nose now for tuition. Sadly alongside other offerings (such as bathmathuser's second most expensive contract-cleaned en suite) it chooses also to run actual slums as cheap end accommodation blocks. Out of the £5,000 per month take on each 3 storey slum it rents out, it sadly cannot even be bothered to ensure proper cleanliness, leaving it to the collective responsibility of 13 strangers in each house. How did that happen?

Bath also has a second university which of course magnifies the resultant that this "town", just 2/3 the size of Cambridge and perhaps less than 1/2 the size of Oxford, when you look at some of the numbers , might simply in large measure be populated by students and university hangers-on.

Be sure that Bath do have the choice today of rapidly improving these slum conditions or even in voluntarily moving these students out to cleaner safer accommodation whilst they deep clean them and get a water pipe installed, else their reputation will take an enormous and very rapid dive. Currently we see them with their pants down. There is no excuse for it. They cannot simply allow themselves the luxury of using these slums for another year or so as a no-brain "stop-gap" until the new construction 700 odd rooms are finished unless they are prepared to spend a few hundred a month out of the £5,000 they take to keep each house properly clean and a one off £500 or so to get a competetent plumber with 15 metres of pipe and a couple of taps to extend the mains-fed plumbing to the upper wash-rooms. You might note there are no baths or showers on the upper floors either. So trapseing up and down cold stairs in a dripping towel or two is de rigueur. I hear that the timing on the room heating is a bit awry also. When the weather turned recently, students were left cold when they should not have been.

We live in a world where university education on a comparitive level with that for which Bath is known, can be obtained in many different countries at much more subsidised cost than it can in England. Travel and living in other countries, especially Europe, is unbelievably easy and it is modern, not quaint and slumlike. The UK's undergraduates are in the main still kept completely blind to the European alternatives other than taking short cheap holidays in the sun or lads' or laddettes' booze trips to sophisticated European cities and test our neighbours' patience.

Bath city itself is not as sophisticated as it makes out for itself, but if it wants to survive as somewhere people talk about being worth a visit, it should quickly shape up. The minutes of local authority meetings I came across when Googling look more like the script from an episode of the Vicar of Dibley than of a well run modern city.

Similarly, I am sure University of Bath will not dare to just brush complaints like mine under the carpet, hoping it will fade away next week or next month. They know if they are seen compounding such big mistakes by inaction, their business is unsustainable (I say 'business' as charity status is surely now a sick joke in the case of UK universities). Educational establishments are in 2013 two a penny like financial services companies. Old names seem to mean something but the necessary lesson to be learned in 2013 is that you are as likely to be let down by one of them as any. They all rely on re-aligning themselves constantly with government handouts or "schemes" which dispense large dollops of cash in their laps this year but maybe not next. Since 2012 it has been dollops from massive new student debt cashflows and a very questionable delegation of cashback authority. These 'businesses' rise and fall and might easily disappear completely in a few short years once they forget their original raison d'etre. To those who have now made it their business to be first in the queue with their bowl to receive the newly released cash that has been loaned shockingly in such large amounts now to our youngsters, I say good riddance when you are gone.

Universities used to rely on the quality of academic happenings within their walls to justify their public funding, but now they rely dishonestly on old reputations, the names of alumni and staff long dead and marketing spin which can easily be derailed by mistakes like the ones that caused this thread. Real quality is easy to determine once you are onsite actually partaking of it. So they like to promote a top-ranking educational reputation ? Likewise rather a lot of others in UK and elsewhere. It all means very little if you do one essential thing badly.

We can see that post the 2012 student loan funding floodgates opening up, this university like many others is somehow building big time on land such as they might control. They get concessionary planning permissions to build on what is effectively green belt, yet it's cheap prefabricated boxes stacked one upon the other like some supermarket pallet warehouse or Tokyo night-hotel. I expect the quality they are putting up to last but a year or two before it starts looking shabby. Hopefully though, those boxes do contain mains fed drinking water where it is needed this time.

It still puzzles me however, where might universities actually be getting the sudden glut of funds for their current accommodation "crescendos"? Quite some of their cashflow I suggest must be from renting out slums to unsuspecting freshers who have been lent huge sums from the government to be spent like urine up the wall at the local pub. I do hope there are no shady deals being done with privateers here.

Who owns the University of Bath anyway? Like all the other universities it enjoys charity status I believe. It might be better to ask "Who controls it?" Shameful to think charities might more often than not now be infested not just with leeches clinging on internally with commercial type anything goes salaries, but also crawling all over them as preferred service providers.. These "managers" seem not even to have the gumption to install a length of copper pipe for provision of a bare minimum acceptable cold drinking water system.

The minimum requirement in the real world would be three taps per three storey house not just one in the kitchen i.e. with two extra taps - onr each for the first and second floors. Perhaps Bath would rather maintain the status quo on the slums for now, and stick vaccination syringes into all freshers in case they pick up anything nasty.

I mean for goodness sakes, I went to two universities and have been on countless residential courses, and on countless trips to some tens of countries abroad, yet I have never been advised to allow myself to be vaccinated like I was some pin cushion, or like some battery farmed pig, or like a hastily deployed WWII or Gulf War soldier. So why are we doing this to our undergraduates? Is it because they get nasty infections when they live in pigsties?

On the water safety front, the Wiki entry for the Roman Baths is quite an eye opener and is perhaps under the same regulatory jurisdiction. It includes reference to water quality and a very unfortunate death from meningitis - one of the vaccinations the university now insists upon. Seems to be a recurring theme in Bath. Apparently there is no Bath City Council? I read however that Bath does not see itself or find itself under the jurisdiction of Somerset's County Council who might be best placed to advise.

So who really calls the regulatory shots on HMOs in Bath?

This is beginning to sound to me a bit like some parts of the problem with regulating business in the City of London - we know there that vested interests rule? A registered charity could not possibly have a vested interest in avoiding safety regulation, could it?

I wonder if anyone has been round the accommodation today and checked out any of what I complained about? I expect "next week will do" for most administrators, and that the same inspectors will then tickbox the same forms as always and sleep easy.

Well that'll be their lookout.

They might wake up if a few students were to send in demands for all their money back paid so far and a transfer to safe accommodation.

Oh and flea72 ... here you are again I see :rotfl: