Having trouble with a useless landlord?
Or know someone who is?
Two Four broadcasting is making a TV show similar to Rogue Traders and they want your help.
So, if your landlord:
…then email tenantsfortv@twofour.co.uk or phone 0207 438 1875. All correspondence is treated with the strictest confidence.
Unless graduates earn a 50,000 pounds salary straight after leaving university, a ‘significant amount’ of their debt will not be paid off
Unpaid student debts could cost the taxpayer around £9 billion a year, a report has found. According to research by investment managers Skandia, unless students immediately earn a £50,000 salary upon leaving university, a “significant amount” of their debt will be written off.
Plans to triple fees to a maximum of £9,000 were approved by MPs in December 2010, but this will be paid in the form a loan. Any part of this loan which is unpaid after 30 years will be written off. The report estimates that if the number of university applicants remains the same, this will cost the Government £8.7 billion in 2045. The figure is dependent on interest rates and the number of students, but it could rise to £9.6 billion.
The report, entitled First Steps to Wealth, also found that graduates earn more than £600,000 more in their careers than 18-year-olds joining the workforce, an average of over £14,000 a year.Graham Bentley, head of investment strategy at Skandia, said: “Those who are able to study for a degree can expect to earn a good living over their lifetime even if they don’t get the job of their dreams straight away and despite incurring costs to complete the course.
“On average, the additional salary received by graduates more than off-sets the debt incurred in studying for a degree. “He added: “Perhaps the biggest challenges highlighted in this study are for the Government.”
Admin fees, insurance fees, cleaning fees, fees for charging a fee … the list is endless
The escalating fees charged seemingly at random by letting agents defy the laws of economics. I half suspect they make them up as they go along, daring each other to see what they can get away with.
Penalties are disguised as “admin fees” or “key money”. In fact, the names are as ingenious as the fees. I once heard of a tenant being charged a “finance fee”; that is, the agent had the audacity to charge clients a fee for charging them a fee.
Students: The National Deposit Scheme is only as strong as you make it! Don’t rely on it alone to protect your money…
Student rental advisory website NakedTenant.co.uk has said that despite the National Deposit Scheme which is designed to protect rental deposits, many student tenants are still getting ripped off by their landlords.
Calvin Santana, a student from Oxford Brookes, said “At the end of our tenancy an inventory was carried out by a specialist company. After 10 days, we were contacted by our letting agent who told us that none of our deposit would be returned and that we owed them £500 for damage/replacements. After a crisis meeting in the pub we decided to ask for a complete breakdown of the charges. Eventually, (after 8 weeks!) we received final details of the total amount being claimed. When we looked through this we realised some of the charges were outrageous for example, £50 to remove a working TV and £400 for dust! So we got together and drafted a second letter setting out our objections and what we felt was fair. A couple of weeks later we got £500 back!’’
Naked Tenant believes that the National Deposit Scheme is a solid scheme and really helps to protect tenant’s money, but the scheme is only as strong as the tenants make it. They need to make sure that they carefully read through the breakdown of costs, calculate what they believe to be the correct charges and be willing to stand firm with their decision. Ed Brimfield, a student from Bristol University, was concerned about a £250 charge for cleaning and so asked the agency for details of the cleaning company they had used. The student said ‘’when I investigated further, I discovered this company didn’t even exist!’’
Many tenants think that because the scheme is a legal requirement introduced by the government, they have no say in negotiating the amount of their deposit they should get back, and as a result, end up paying a lot more than they should to the landlord. It is highly unlikely that you will receive all your deposit back as over a 12 month tenancy some fair charges are likely to have occurred, so it is important that both sides have fair expectations in their negotiations.
For helpful free advice, check out TheNakedTenant.co.uk
The police were out in force as thousands of students marched through central London.
Some 4,000 officers were on duty, as demonstrators marched peacefully in a protest against higher tuition fees and “privatisation” in universities.
After the violence of last year’s major fees protest, the police had warned they might use plastic bullets in “extreme circumstances”.
Police said 24 people were arrested, mostly for breaches of the peace.
Police estimate there were about 2,000 protesters, but organisers put the number attending at 15,000.
Scotland Yard said three arrests were for public order offences, one was for possession of an offensive weapon, three were for going equipped and 12 breaches of the peace.
At lunchtime, some protesters broke away from the march and set up tents in Trafalgar Square, but were eventually moved on.
The crowd marched to the City of London, where a protest against corporate greed has been taking place outside St Paul’s Cathedral.
Financial district
BBC correspondent Mike Sergeant was with the protesters as they neared St Paul’s and the City.
“The march is moving slowly, sedately even. It is quite extraordinary the way it’s being policed,” he said.
“It’s the most tightly controlled march through London that I have ever seen. Very little opportunity for protesters to break away – an enormous contrast to last year.”
The student protest, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, is against the government’s plans for a market-driven higher education system and the rising tuition fees.
“We are being told by a cabinet of millionaires that we will have to pay triple tuition fees,” said campaign leader Michael Chessum.
Students under pressure to find housing
Many students moving out of university halls have to start looking for properties as early as November if they wish to find a decent place to live in the following year. Claire, a first year student from Nottingham University said, ‘I started here just 6 weeks ago and I am already having to decide who I want to live with next year and need to start looking for a house soon otherwise I will miss out on getting a good one’. The search for Student Accommodation is becoming increasingly difficult with demand for student housing rising year on year and the weak job market encouraging more pupils to go to University.
TheNakedTenant.co.uk feels that Universities should work with letting agents to encourage students to start looking for private accommodation in February. This gives them a chance to really settle in, find who they want to live with and then begin their search for a student house. Should letting agents wait until February to release their student housing?
Edinburgh University could become the most expensive place to study in the UK for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish university said it would charge £9,000 a year in tuition fees.
The naked tenant has been featured in the Bath Chronicle:
Students in Bath can get free advice about the potential pitfalls of renting houses thanks to a new website.
The Naked Tenant has been set up, written and researched by two recent graduates who want to pass on their first-hand experiences of the student rental market.
Founders James Bryan, 23, and Malcolm West, 22, were friends when they were pupils at Kingswood School and stayed in touch when they went to Oxford Brookes University together.
Full article: http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/New-website-aims-reveal-naked-truth-student/story-13428967-detail/story.html
On the University of Lincoln’s Brayford Campus, 200 first-year students are faced with living in a newly constructed village of temporary accommodation as the institution struggles to provide housing for an unprecedented number of applicants.
This year the University received a record number of applications, with 3,000 students seeking to start their higher education prior to the increase in tuition fees at the start of the next academic year, when Lincoln intends to raise fees to £9,000 a year. However, only those who applied before 21st August were offered permanent accommodation, with late applicants, including students applying through clearing, being offered a place in one of the hundred portable cabins in the new “Festival Gardens” complex.
“Just bring the essentials with you on Sunday such as bedding, toiletries, a few cooking utensils etc.”
The students’ union at the university said it sympathised with the position of students who have had difficulty in finding somewhere to live in Lincoln and would do all it could to support and represent their issues.
“At present all the halls accommodation in Lincoln are full but the university is working very hard to ensure that they can accommodate all students who need it on Sunday, albeit that some students will be in temporary accommodation.”
They also say that they “will actively work with the University and community to improve both access to, and quality of, accommodation for Lincoln students in future years”.
Michael Watts, from Nottingham, who will be arriving in Lincoln as a first-year-student and taking a place in the temporary accommodation said: “It’s not really what I expected. I expected to be in normal halls but I suppose the cabins will be OK.
“The fact they have done something about it is really good. I’m really pleased I have got accommodation now even if it is temporary.”