The BBC has today reported on research carried out by Unipol and the Higher Education Policy Institute which has found that in the last two years, average student rent has gone up by 14.6%, while maintenance loans have risen by only 5.2%. The reasons for the rent increases are well documented (rising costs of construction, borrowing, operations including utilities and staff pay rises etc) and this further highlights the need for the government and local authorities to work with student accommodation providers to bring forward affordable accommodation and to ensure that the student finance system is fit for purpose.
Affordable student accommodation is one of the issues which often arises at the planning stage, and my colleague Sophie Smith has recently written about this and other planning considerations https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7119660573658619904/
"We are now at the point where accommodation costs are pricing students out of certain universities, which will have disastrous consequences for students from poorer backgrounds being able to access education."
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