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‘Rate Your Landlord’, toolkits and life in accommodation

Date passed: 21 February 2013

Proposer: Thomas Renhard

Seconder: Pete Daw

This Union notes:

1. The existence of ‘Rate Your Landlord’ campaigns that have been run at other Students’ Unions in the United Kingdom.
2. As well as living in on-campus and ‘purpose built’ accommodation, students also live in privately rented accommodation within many of the local communities across the West of England.
3. There are national codes of practice and accreditation schemes including the Accreditation Network UK (ANUK)/Unipol Codes of Practice that promote good standards of accommodation across the country.
4. Not all Landlords in locations where there are UWE campuses are signed up to accreditation schemes.
5. Accommodation exists in the diverse communities that comprise the West of England.
6. Students are charged ‘administration/agency fees’ when renting a property in a new location.

This Union believes:

1. Shelter is a basic human need upon which maintaining good mental health and attaining strong academic performance is built (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs).
2. Affordability matters to all students as their income is below national and regional averages.
3. Students are competing for the same housing resource in an unregulated housing market where average incomes are over four times the value of the current basic maintenance loan (£5,500).
4. That a tension exists between the needs and interests of landlords for regular rental income and students for sensitivity and flexibility in the face of unpredictable and often late payments from Student Finance England.
5. That more must be done to help students facing extortionate accommodation charges from housing providers, sharp practices surrounding deposits are leading to very lengthy and stressful disputes.
6. Students should be given more information on quality of landlords in locations where there are UWE campuses and where UWE students may be placed.
7. A ‘Rate Your Landlord’ campaign at UWESU will improve the choices that the diverse range of UWE students make in finding the most ideal match and interests for shelter.
8. 8. Students have insufficient information on the licenses and tenancies with which they engage, and would benefit from further information, advice and guidance on the rights and responsibilities that such agreements create.
9. Students would be empowered by providing an accommodation toolkit that increases their knowledge and equips them with resolution to frequently occurring scenarios.
10. That the University, Students’ Union, local authorities and the Bristol Mayor’s Office should work in partnership to promote and enable an accreditation scheme of student accommodation.
11. Students are currently made scapegoats for much of the anti-social behaviour in the city. More should be done to promote and recognise the important role we play in local communities.
12. That ‘administration/agency fees’ are often extortionate and can be a figure of approximately £200 per person.

This Union resolves:

1. To implement a ‘Rate Your Landlord’ campaign across all campuses, drawing upon good practice from other Students’ Unions.
2. To use the Halls Rep Structure and Community and Welfare Committee to put together a “Rate Your Landlord” questionnaire
3. To implement the ‘Rate Your Landlord Campaign’ across all accommodation providers.
4. To create an ‘accommodation toolkit’ to include the following (list by no means exhaustive): A student friendly guide to activities and volunteering opportunities in the area; student rights before, during and after signing tenancy agreements; whether living in university purpose built accommodation is right for you; recognising good landlords to rent with; and dealing with bad landlords.
5. To work in partnership with the local authorities, the Bristol Mayor’s Office and the university to implement an accreditation scheme covering all student landlords.
6. To better promote opportunities with the volunteering service that deliver positive benefit to the communities in which we live and portray a positive image of students in our city.
7. To work in partnership with the local authorities, the Bristol Mayor’s Office and the university to implement a cap on ‘administration/agency fees’.
8. The information generated by the campaign be passed on to UWE Marketing to lobby to be included in marketing and promotional material for prospective students.