The purpose of this report is an overview of Term 2 and 3 during the 2024-2025 academic year of University of Nottingham (UoN) and Nottingham Trent University (NTU), and to review the progress of the student community organising (SCO) team at the end of this academic year.
Student Housing
From conversations the SCO’s had with students last term, housing became a priority in term 2 as many found their accommodation to be subpar. The initial plan included holding ‘house meetings’ (a type of focus group within groups who already know each other) instead of stalls as it allows for better communication with students and potential follow up. Our first attempt was to contact societies within UoN and NTU as these contain a large number of students. However, a majority did not reply, and those who did reply were not interested. The focus then changed to students that the SCO’s already were in contact with, which led to three house meetings during term 2 and 3, with 19 students in total that were involved.
House Meetings
The house meetings provided a range of interesting responses from students who have lived in student housing (not including university owned accommodation). Some students were satisfied with their living arrangements, as they did not have high expectations for the standard of student housing and found communication with agencies and contractors to be efficient and effective. However, a large number of students in the house meeting had examples of poor housing with first-hand experiences of agencies not providing sufficient support that felt in line with the cost of rent. For example, students have been left without necessities e.g., water, heating and electricity, but were still expected to pay the full amount of rent, and one student was threatened with legal action if they refused to pay whilst living without necessary amenities. A highlighted issue amongst the three house meetings is the lack of control students have, and their reliance on agencies/landlords to fix issues. One student was facing threats from the council who wanted to fine them for the amount of rubbish on the street, however, it was not taken into consideration that bins are not always taken each week, as well as not enough bins being provided for the amount of people living accommodation. The student who was facing the fine lived in a large accommodation that housed 22 people, and they only had 4 bins between them (2 general and 2 recycling). Furthermore, a majority of students said that they would benefit from the university themselves to provide further support with second year and above housing. This includes giving advice around your rights as a student renter and highlighting support that is already in place, as this is not widely known.
The overall impact of holding house meetings was successful as it brought students together to share and reflect on their housing experience. It would be important for the next steps to include bringing these stories to key stakeholders who can help take action with improving the quality of student housing. Furthermore, house meetings are only effective if you can locate students who are interested in taking part. As described above, the SCO’s were unable to get in contact with societies through the use of emailing, and so new methods of finding a wider range of students needs to be considered.
Reflections for next year
From working in the SCO team for nearly 2 years there are some reflections that I think would ideally benefit for next year’s cohort:
- The SCO job role will ideally benefit from a student who is able to stay for two or more years, this ensures a longer amount of time to plan and take action on current issues, within the small-time frame of the academic year.
- Increase social media presence – the account is already created but currently has no posts.
- Include student community organising in welcoming packs for students, as well as part of the re-welcoming PowerPoints for returning students.
- Potentially carry on the focus on student housing onto next year, as there is still a lot that can be done and some groundwork is there.
- In term 1, there should be talks with the SU president and officers to establish what the yearly goal should be and how everyone can work together.
- Due to changes within the Nottingham Citizens team, there was not as much involvement with them this year. Hopefully this can be resolved with a new local organiser recruited and in roll, and SCO will benefit greatly with their partnership.
- Furthermore, community organising training to be done with Nottingham Citizens in person if possible – this can then be one full day instead of multiple weeks that can be easily missed due to busy schedules.