Going and Coming Notes

Unipol Student Homes

The UK Student Accommodation Forum- Going & Coming

Thursday 17th December, 11 AM-12:00 PM

A conversation on current trends in the Student Accommodation industry - brought to you by Unipol.

 

Guest Speakers: Martin Blakey (CEO, Unipol), Jordan Meates ( …. Sheffield Hallam), Michael Lees ( …., Nottingham Trent)

 

Jordan Meates – Sheffield Hallam

  • Sheffield Hallam don’t own any accommodation, but allocated to around 4,500 bedspaces
  • The University itself led on testing, with the accommodation team fulfilling a promotional role
  • Main testing centre was based in City Campus
  • Students were told they should make arrangements to leave within 24 hours of receiving a negative COVID-19 test result
  • Around 3700 students were tested – it is suspected that around 60% of students made their own arrangements outside of the University with regards to testing
  • A challenge identified was household groups wanting to book tests at together
  • Overall, testing worked well and had positive feedback from students – the Government referred to Hallam’s testing set up as the ‘gold standard’

Michael Lees – Nottingham Trent

  • NTU have 10,000 first years to accommodate – 4,500 are housed with UPP, the rest are in various PBSAs
  • Students were generally accepting of the situation they found themselves in – there has been a growing concern over social isolation, the ongoing impacts of COVID
  • The demand for support has increased 300%
  • 535 students indicated that they were staying over Christmas when surveyed, this is more likely to be around 1000
  • Student behaviour has been a massive issue – 1000 students have gone through the code of behaviour process, and the reoffending rate is up from 2% to 19%, across both halls of residence and HMOs
  • Just under 1000 had asymptomatic tests, 7000 took lateral-flow test
  • Discounting not expected again despite this happening elsewhere in the sector

 

Martin Blakey – General Update

  • With regards to the end of term travel window: an estimated 20% left before it began, 30% left within it or across the weekend following, 30% left between 9th-18th December, 20% will leave after this due to work commitments.
  • Nationally it is estimated that between 25%-40% of students were tested, with higher numbers seen in campus and Russell Group universities
  • Numbers remaining over the Christmas period is lower than usual, but there are very few having to self-isolating
  • Two HEPI blogs worth reading:
  • Martin presented preliminary results of the ANUK/Unipol National Code Universities/PBSA Communications Survey (for further details on this please email k.watson@unipol.org.uk to request a copy of the presentation)