Student Landlord News - More Halls, Prices and Right to Rent
Since our article summarising the new student halls planned in the city back in February, one more site has been identified and design work is currently underway ahead of initial planning submissions.
We have spoken to our friends at University Student Housing about the high prices and long contracts advertised by the companies who operate these halls and have assurance that this practice is being discouraged.
And we have also raised the issue of 'Right To Rent" with Prof. Graham Galbraith, Vice Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth with a request for more support in this area, especially when offering accommodation to international students.
The site for the proposed new student hall is beside the Civic Offices and today, it is occupied by the line of buildings including Chaucer House all the way round to what was the Navigators pub opposite St Lukes church, passing under the Margaret Rule building.
'Unite" are the developers of the Greetham Street halls and they also own and operate the existing Margaret Rule building and it is they who will be building the new halls on this site. The new building will have a full height atrium entrance where the timber façade is for Margaret Rule today and that entrance will service both buildings. The new build will rise to 10 stories at its highest point and will provide homes for 2,000 students between the 3 adjacent Unite buildings.
Greetham Street will be ready this student year, the unrelated Zurich Building development is scheduled for next year and this new development at the Chaucer House site is hoped to be completed in 2018. There is a 4th significant new build going through planning in Surrey Street which is owned by Crown Student Living and will be 23 storeys and have 520 bedrooms.
The new Greetham Street building is still being advertised as £150 per week on 51 week contracts (details here), Rachel Geary of Student Housing told us, "the University is working in partnership with Unite for Greetham Street and is taking applications from students for the 2016/17 academic year for the majority of the rooms at the site. The students will be allocated by the University to these rooms on 40 week contracts. "
On the subject of 'Right To Rent", Professor Galbraith said, "Many thanks (to the PDPLA) for you and your members continued support for students at the University through the provision of high quality rental accommodation.
We value very much the availability of rental accommodation for our students and wish to support you in whatever way we can. However, the challenge for us is the fact that this is a legal responsibility placed specifically on landlords, not Universities. There are many new requirements on us in terms of student reporting, but these are quite separate from the need for landlords to undertake their own checks and it would not be appropriate for us to do this on your behalf. It is our understanding that any form of third party verification would not meet the legal expectations and in any case it is the landlord who would ultimately be judged in breach of the law if there was any failure in the checking process.
While we are not able to offer direct assistance in undertaking this work, we can certainly be supportive of what your members need to undertake. For example, we could produce some information for international students on what they would need to provide to a landlord to gain residence, to alert them, help prepare them and make it as smooth as possible for the landlords and the students.
I understand that we planning to do this to support our students and would certainly be happy to share our plans with you."