Shoddy extension work, disregard for planning regulations, DIY electrics and slug infestations have caused students living out of college-owned accommodation to speak out against their living and study environments.
In some cases, landlords have ignored complaints of students or have attempted to placate them through promises of action, but have never resolved the problems.
A large number of students believe their landlords’ failure to act is based on the assumption that students do not care – or know – enough of their rights as tenants to “kick up a fuss.”
One second year mathematician described the state of his property – a Victorian terrace in Cowley – as “almost laughable, if we didn’t have to live in it.”
The building, which is listed as fit for human habitation on two stories only, possesses a damp, mouldy basement beneath the two externally visible floors, which is used for parties by its current occupants.
The student said, “a representative of the council visited the property last week. He asked me a number of questions, including how many floors we live on, whether our smoke alarms functioned, and who our estate agents were.
“He told me he was asking because ‘a lot of student houses in the area are not registered for habitation on the three stories they actually comprise’.”
Most Cowley Road properties feature a first floor bathroom, but in a large number of student houses this is situated at the back of the house, meaning there is no access to it other than through the kitchen, creating a sanitary minefield when toilet users return to the main living area.
The problem is not confined to the relatively cheap accommodation off the Cowley Road. In the pricey area of Jericho, four LMH students, who pay £420 per person per month to rent their three-storey terraced property, described their discomfort at having to access the bathroom through their narrow galley kitchen.
One of the students said, “The walls are paper-thin. It’s horrible when people want to use the loo when one of us is cooking; it really puts you off your food.
“And from what I can see, the waste water pipe runs right next to the mains supply for the kitchen tap. If there was to be some kind of leak, one of us could get seriously ill”.
Another living-out student in the second year, who did not want to be named, described modernisation work on his property as “patently unsafe”.
“New RSJ lintels [supporting masonry above windows and doors] have been inserted with only a centimetre or two overlap. Any erosion of brickwork would cause the whole structure to collapse.”
He continued, “all the electrics in the house were put in by our current landlord. Half the wall sockets don’t supply power when we plug appliances in, and a few make intermittent buzzing noises, even when switched off.”
A letting company were asked about a passage in the student’s tenancy agreement that requires “all electrical work carried out at the Premises [to be] carried out by an electrical contractor who is a member of an approved scheme under the Part P (Electrical Safety) Regulations 2003.”
They replied, “all our student properties must comply with the HMOs [the 2006 regulations governing Houses in Multiple Occupancy]. If they did not comply, we would not act as agents on them.”
In addition, fire safety regulations in numerous student properties have been poorly observed. Any building over two stories that is approved for rental as a house of multiple occupancy is required by law to have certain fire doors with self-closing devices.
None of the students contacted lived in accommodation that featured fire doors.
Even in the case of a loft conversion on Bullingdon Road, for which a fire door is required to be installed in order to protect the stairwell and maintain a fire escape route, students said that the self-closing mechanism had been cut to make everyday access easier.
In a house on Magdalen Road, students described their struggle to get their managing agents to deal with a ground floor slug infestation. A second year Wadhamite said, “I woke up one morning to find slug trails all over my jeans, which I had left on the floor. Since then they’ve been pestering us almost every night, but the agents haven’t been round. They told us to put slug pellets down, which haven’t worked, and now they tell us there’s nothing more we can do.”
A student on an adjoining street suffered the same problem. “I didn’t complain to my landlord, though. I thought he would laugh at it, considering that my other housemates were having far worse problems.
“One had a huge patch of mould along one wall when we first moved in, and the agents had to bring in a dehumidifier. It can’t be healthy.”
Slugs are not the only pests affecting students in the area. A group of six students living on Cowley’s Percy Street spoke of a spiders’ nest beneath their house, which was only destroyed after repeated complaints to the landlord.
In the same house, a leak from a first floor bathroom left a second year English student without a bed. “The man who owns the house seemed fairly sympathetic,” her housemate said, “but he didn’t come round to fix the shower, or stop the leak, for two days after we had complained. And as for the bed – he just told her to let it dry. She’s had to find somewhere else to sleep for the past few days.”
The housemate added, “the situation hasn’t really been resolved. The landlord told us that unless we dry ourselves completely before leaving the shower unit, the leak might re-occur. And the shower behaves pretty oddly – no tap in the house works when it’s on.”
In the less student-heavy district of Botley, a fourth year medic claimed that his landlord was blaming him and his housemates after amateur DIY caused a leak from an upstairs bathroom.
“The bath was oddly installed at a distance from the wall, and in the gap was a sloping row of tiles that we naturally leant on when getting into the bath, since the wall was far away.”
“The tiles were unfortunately not waterproofed, nor designed to take the weight of a person. However, we were not alerted to any of this by the landlord.
“Despite this, he has asked us to pay for damages caused by water seeping through the cracked tiles into the downstairs living area. We are still in negotiations.”
Another Oxford estate agent which owns an extensive portfolio of student properties, said that they were unable to comment.
