Halls Rejection and Housing Shortage

The current housing market is unstable for renters, and more and more landlords are not renting to students, with the impact of the Rent Reform Bill. The impact of covid meant that residential properties were left vacant and offered to professionals and families. With the cost of living crisis impacting on incomes, more students have applied for Halls that ever before, with the certainty of rent included and a cheaper room that other Purpose Built Student Housing. Sadly, we do not anticipate this issue going away and without more housing in the area, this is likely to be an ongoing issue.

We anticipate that this has impacted around 600/700 students.

Additionally, the University offered more Halls to returning students this year which has impacted the room availability of new students. Whilst this is a small number, this has contributed to the issue.

Sadly, your options are limited as there is limited housing left in Guildford. You can wait for a room to come up, but all available rooms (less than 100) have been ringfenced for those who were guaranteed accommodation and therefore it may not be wise to wait.

• Wait for a room to come up: If you do choose to wait, 15th September is when returning students will find out if they are able to progress and some students will be terminated from University. This means that there may be some Halls that are free. We do not recommend waiting.
• Keep looking in Guildford and the nearby areas: You may find accommodation in Guildford, especially as of the 15th September. However, you might also want to try surrounding areas, as suggested above. Guildford has good transport links to Woking, Aldershot and good bus links to other places.
• Defer your place at University until 2024 when you will be guaranteed University accommodation
• Commute from home, which will be a good option for some of you.

All students who were offered a room had two deadlines (except returning students). The first deadline was to apply for accommodation, the second was to confirm their place if you met all the conditions. If you missed either of your deadline, your right to guaranteed accommodation was waivered. Deadlines were as follows:

• Returning students: Apply by 15th March 2023
• New Undergraduate students with Surrey as their first choice: Apply by 25th July, confirm their place by 25th July 2023
• New Undergraduate students with Surrey as their insurance choice: Apply by 23rd August, confirmed their place by 27th August 2023
• New Postgraduate students: Needed to meet their criteria by 1st August 2023 which included: Applied for their accommodation, met the conditions of their formal application and, the University is in receipt of their academic fee deposit.

If you have been lucky enough to be offered a room on campus, but it isn’t in a band that you were seeking then you have two options:

1. You can keep the offer and try and swap your room with another student in October, when room swaps open. There is no guarantee that you will be able to swap so you should be sure that you are ok with your allocation, just in case.
2. You can reject the room. If you choose to reject the room then you will not be offered alternative accommodation and you will need to find yourself a private room off campus – please see the information above. The University will not allocate you another room.

Students who choose to defer their place at University will be guaranteed accommodation for next year. Normally, deferrals are not open to clearing students and the deadline is 31st August. However, after pressure from your Union, the University have agreed that clearing students who cannot find a room and have no alternative, may be offered a deferral.

The deferral deadline has been extended to 14th September 2023.

Courses that have a registration with the NMC, BPS, BACPS, HCPC, RCVS or otherwise, are unable to defer due to your course requirements. Some students on Guildford School of Acting courses cannot defer.

Parking on campus and in the local area: The University cannot guarantee parking for students, but there is usually plenty of parking on Stag Hill campus for all, especially since the University have acquired additional parking this year. The local area has lots of residential space where students can park on the road for free including Park Barn, Cabell Road, Southway, Northway and other areas.

Bus passes: Students can get a discount on local bus services

Train travel: We are working with the University to see if they can offer one-off loan payments to students who wish to purchase a season ticket.

If you were a firm or insurance offer holder, who did not go through clearing, and you applied by your deadline, then you should have been given accommodation.

You should email accommodation@surrey.ac.uk but you can also email ussu.advice@surrey.ac.uk and we may be able to follow up for you.

As we understand it, all students who have the University of Surrey as their firm or insurance offer, will be guaranteed accommodation. It may not be the band of accommodation that you want, but the University will do what they can to give you their first or second choice. Clearing students are not guaranteed accommodation.

We cannot speak on behalf of admissions, so if you choose to withdraw your place from clearing, and then re-apply, we cannot guarantee that you will then be offered your place at Surrey again.

I am afraid there is no way to find out where you are on the waiting list, as the allocations are given based on your guarantee and they are balloted. We do know that the University have around 60 rooms left to allocate, and they are ringfenced for those students with the guarantee. You should not wait to find alternative arrangements.

If you are looking for private accommodation then your contract will be a minimum of 6 months, but normally they are around a year, so you want to think about the time that you will want to move out. Signing up for a year contact now might mean paying double rent next summer.

Purpose Built Student Accommodation tend to have 44 and 51 week contracts. You might want to work out what is cheaper – you might find that 51 weeks is just as expensive over the year as 44 weeks.

We would recommend using Roome to find housemates at the moment. They are working with students to find suitable house pairings to help you meet other similar students.

On 15th of September, our returning students who had exams in the August reassessment period, will find out if they are able to continue with their education at Surrey. For those students who sadly fail assessments during August, they may be suspended from study or terminated from programme.

This means that if they have Halls, their offer will be revoked and rooms will open up – this will be a very small percentage and we would not recommend waiting.

It does also mean that students in Private Accommodation may need to find someone to take their room off campus in a house share.

We would recommend keeping in touch with Roome.

The University offer Hardship Loans to students who are in financial difficulty but there is no specific finance available to students who are impacted by this situation.

We are working with the University to see if there is more they can do to support commuting students.

I am afraid that there is no additional support for International students in this situation but, you may want to get in touch with Friends International, who can link you up with other students in the community.

Yes! Although we cannot guarantee this. This would rely on those students in Halls at the moment leaving their accommodation, which we cannot say for certain. Rooms do open up throughout the year when students leave University, or are asked to leave Halls through disciplinary action. This may be a good option for students who do not mind commuting until a room opens up, but there is no guarantee when this will be or how long you will wait.

It is worth noting that if you choose to switch from private landlord to Halls, you would still be liable for rent in your private house and you may not be able to swap out.

Yes, anyone can join the waitlist but the demand this year means that it is very unlikely that you will get accommodation.