Student pays £170 a week for room being used as a storage cupboard
A student was shocked to arrive at her new accommodation this week to find she couldn’t actually get in the door.
Georgia Sayward, 19, was excited to move to a shared house in Cambridge for her second year of Criminal Investigative Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.
But she instead discovered a bedroom stuffed with flat-pack furniture and she couldn’t even find her bed amid the chaos.
She was forced to spend the night on her mattress in the kitchen, to be woken by drips of water coming down the wall.
She told CambridgeshireLive: ‘I spent all day crying because they were telling me I could either go and live in a house by myself or stay down here until they get my room sorted but we don’t know when that will be.
‘I don’t feel very safe, because anyone could walk in through the front door.’
Student accommodation bosses say the room had not been cleared in time for Georgia to move in due to an ‘error’.
The student’s parents Frances and Mark, who drove their daughter over from their home in Northamptonshire, were appalled by the ‘general grubbiness’ of the six-bedroom accommodation.
Frances said: ‘We were ever so disappointed and actually really quite upset at how upset she was.
‘We’d packed everything up, driven down there, expecting to be able to unload it and get her room nice and pretty and leave her settled in and safe and secure… and actually it wasn’t quite like that.
‘It’s ridiculous. It’s wardrobes, and beds, and sofas, and bedside tables, apparently it’s all the furniture that should have been put into the student rooms, and it’s what’s left that hasn’t been done yet.
‘So we’re not even sure if she has got a bed underneath all that because you can’t see it.’
She added they had received no warning about the state of the room, although they had been asked to pay the deposit to UK Student Houses, which is the trading arm of Homes for Students PLC.
‘We were actually told that nobody had done any house checks because they’d been short-staffed,’ Frances said.
‘She’s got no sort of security, she hasn’t got anywhere to lock her stuff away, other than in her friend’s room, so she’s feeling a little bit vulnerable, and not very happy about it.’
She claimed she noted ‘a stream of students coming in and saying, “We haven’t got a key, this key doesn’t work, I haven’t got a bed, my room’s filthy”‘ at the company’s reception that day.
A spokesperson for UK Student Houses said: ‘Due to an error with our supplier, we were extremely sorry that the welcome received by this student was below the standard we would usually deliver.
‘Once the situation became clear, our team worked around the clock to rectify the issue.
‘The matter has now been resolved and we very much look forward to offering the very best experience to all students as they commence their studies in the city.’
Are you or is your child having difficulties with student accommodation at university? Get in touch with your story at sian.elvin@metro.co.uk
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