ACCOMMODATION

Accommodation

We only receive a fairly small number of complaints relating to accommodation each year, but we see in those complaints that the impact on students of problems with their accommodation can be high. Although we have not to date seen the increasing challenges around the availability and cost of student accommodation fully reflected in complaints to us, in part because students can’t complain to us about private rented accommodation, those challenges are likely to have a significant effect on some students’ experience of higher education. 

Sometimes the issues raised in complaints are about the accommodation itself, and sometimes they involve the student’s behaviour or that of other students in the accommodation. It’s important that the provider investigates the issues, considers the impact on those involved and takes steps to minimise it, and keeps the student informed. We have seen examples of providers taking a flexible and positive approach to accommodation issues as well as cases where issues have not been handled as well as they could have been. 

We also see in complaints that students are not always clear about what they have signed up to, or about how to formally raise issues when they have concerns. It is important that providers’ information for students is as clear and easily accessible as possible, keeping in mind that for some students it is the first time they have lived independently away from home, or lived in a different country.  

We encourage early resolution of complaints where possible. In some of the cases we have seen, the provider recognised issues either during its internal processes or in the early stages of the student’s complaint to us and made an offer to the student to put things right. Sometimes complaints to us are settled in this way. Where the student doesn’t accept what we consider to be a reasonable offer, the complaint to us will usually be Not Justified on the basis that a reasonable offer has been made, and the case summaries include some cases with this outcome.