Launch of the new ANUK Code for Large Residential Developments for Students Accommodation managed by Educational Establishments
A New Gold Standard for Student Accommodation Management
The new ANUK Code for Educational Establishments was launched on 24th July 2008.
This new Code was the outcome of an in-depth review of the previous Code carried out by a Working Group and responded to concerns from educational establishments that the previous Code was over-proscriptive and failed to recognise the accommodation management culture that was special to universities and colleges.
It is important to see this revision in the light of the very positive experience that has taken place with the previous Codes (which together cover over 110,000 bed spaces throughout the United Kingdom) and those accommodation providers that have joined and supported it.
The review built on the strengths of the previous Code and has eradicated weaknesses identified. In particular, it has built upon the excellent and ground-breaking self assessment and verification procedures of the previous Code and its mission to spread best practice.
The Code's purpose is to ensure that educational institutions manage their accommodation to a transparent set of management standards and are accountable to their consumers for those standards. The Code also aims to improve, and measure, management performance as a basis for continuous self-improvement. Students, and their parents, value the Code as providing them with both peace of mind and offering rights of redress if problems are not dealt with.
The new Code has been written afresh and reflects institutional cultures, introduces a peer-to-peer verification and inspection routines to ensure compliance and allows for benchmarking of management performance and the transmission of good practice between members.
The review has fully involved that National Union of Students(NUS) who have a high sense of ownership of the outcome and that their support has been an essential part of developing the Code.
Many others were also involved in the review including the Association for Student Residential Accommodation (ASRA), the Conference for University Business Officers (CUBO), the Association of Managers of Student Services in Higher Education (AMOSSHE), the Accreditation Network UK (ANUK), the Association of Colleges (AOC) and, on behalf of the Government, representatives of Communities and Local Government
In more detail the new Code has:
- removed a number physical standards and concentrated more on management matters
- improved its coverage of matters relating to student care
- built on the self assessment and verification processes so that
peer-to-peer review between educational institutions could be
undertaken between institutions. Each member institution will have a
nominated member of staff responsible for operating and enforcing the
Code and that these staff will form a trained cadre of reviewers
issuing confidential reports for other institutions producing
comparative spider grams of assessment and verification retained the
complaints and Tribunal system to maintain accountability and
transparency.
This Code builds on the past ANUK experiences over the last 24 months and offers a very real alterative to the existing UUK Code for those institutions wishing to establish a "gold standard" for accommodation management.
