By Lara Wiebecke
Pictured: Lilian Knowles courtyard, 22 November 2021
Back in November 2021, The Beaver reported on a fire that broke out at LSE Rosebery Hall, leaving students without a functioning laundry room for three weeks. Around the same time, at least two blocks in Sidney Webb House were reportedly infested with silverfish. According to students interviewed by The Beaver, these problems are not isolated incidents, but connected to a larger issue with how several LSE halls are being managed. Students’ experiences point towards a general lack of both accountability and willingness to deal with complaints. Halls run by private companies seem to be particularly affected.
Postgraduate students living in Lilian Knowles House, an accommodation run by the private company Sanctuary Students, report noticing issues from the day they moved in. Media student Jessa* remembers the hall’s courtyard being littered with rubbish on her first day. “There was trash everywhere. It stretched from the courtyard, over to the common room and into every single block. That really set the tone for my time living here.” She soon started noticing rats running around between the rubbish bags and estimates that by December about 16 rats lived in the courtyard. These claims are seconded by Peter* who reports that first rats were sighted by students in early December: “Lilian Knowles responded relatively quickly that something was to be done, but when I came back here after Christmas in late January, the rats were still here.” In the meantime, a pest control team has been called to handle the issue.
Fortunately, Jessa lives on the third floor which is removed from the rodents and unaffected by the flooding issues some of the residents on the lower floors have experienced. A student living on the ground floor shared with The Beaver that her room had been severely affected by water damage after a pipe broke in an adjacent room. Soon water started seeping into her room through the wall, which was initially absorbed by the carpet and then started forming puddles. In her words, the student “kept going to reception for like five days and nobody came to check…until finally they gave me a humidifier. After a whole week people came to remove the water with special equipment.” The student was then offered a different room, but was made to return to her old room only two days later. The student was not offered a refund or an apology.
Jessa describes communication difficulties between students and staff at Lilian Knowles House: “If you have a problem, you can’t ask for help.” When approaching reception to get hold of a parcel or to request maintenance, staff were often unable to initially help, referring her to an online complaints form “so they can just push your issue to the side”.
Faulty fire alarms have been one of the issues at the forefront of students’ minds. Public policy student Edward recalls being woken up by a fire alarm at 2am during his very first night in the dorm. This was only one of three late-night fire alarms that went off in the week before Welcome Week. False alarms were so frequent that he joked that “if one day the fire alarm is actually real, we won’t take it seriously and we will all die”. In advice in emails sent out by management, students should consider themselves responsible for the frequency of fire alarms, which are supposedly triggered by unattended cooking and hot showers. According to reviews on Google, students have been experiencing issues with fire alarms for years.
Like Jessa, Edward has experienced frequent communication problems with hall staff. After noticing that some of the hall’s washing machines left his clothes dirtier than when they first went in, he informed reception about the issue who referred him to the laundry’s service provider. According to Edward, the service provider never responded to his complaint. Despite noting that some of the Lilian Knowles staff members were friendly, Edward described management as hard to reach and unresponsive. The Beaver tried to reach the hall’s management team for comment but received no response.
Jessa points out that “other halls in London also look really bad”. Two postgraduate students living at Urbanest King’s Cross also reported communication problems with staff: “No one ever replies to our emails, unless we copy in our parents.” In their experience, hall staff have not dealt with several maintenance issues – for instance, with the lock of their mailbox that has been broken since December. Many of their complaints echo issues experienced by students at Lilian Knowles House. In a response to The Beaver, an Urbanest spokesperson explained that they take issues very seriously and that their operational team aims to respond to broken equipment the day it is reported.
A second-year undergraduate student living at the intercollegiate International Hall alleges that the food served in her hall was of poor quality, which had given herself and others food poisoning. When The Beaver asked about issues with the catering service, International Hall responded: “We are aware that there have been some issues with the catering offering at International Hall and have held a forum for our residents to attend and feedback directly to our Catering and Hall Managers. We apologise to any resident who has experienced any issues, but we’re confident in the steps we’ve taken to improve the service.”
Students point to various potential reasons behind communication and management issues in student halls. Jessa suspects that LSE is “too far removed” from what is going on in accommodations run by providers such as Sanctuary Students. She wishes that LSE were more involved with hall management, since the university was more acutely aware of student needs.
According to an LSE spokesperson: “Staff from the LSE Residential Services Leadership team meet at regular intervals with senior staff from these organisations to review any open issues and work together to ensure these are resolved smoothly.” Further, the private companies Urbanest and Sanctuary Students both subscribe to the Student Accommodation Code “to ensure that they adhere to rigorous standards in their residences”. In cases where students had gone through the halls’ complaints procedure and were unhappy with the outcome, they are encouraged to reach out to LSE Residential Services to make LSE aware of this.
Edward pointed out that he moved into his hall despite knowing about some of the pre-existing issues because it was the cheapest option he could find. This suggests a possibility that hall providers are taking advantage of the fact that students are willing to put up with low living standards, given the high level of living costs in London.
Despite the issues some students experience in their accommodation, many also point out the positives. The previously mentioned students from Urbanest King’s Cross enjoy the central location, general aesthetic and free events offered by their hall. Despite not enjoying the food, the student from International Hall rates her overall experience as positive. She appreciates the hall’s amenities which include a large common room, two music rooms and a squash court. Living in halls had helped her feel less lonely and experience a feeling of community. Overall, student halls have their benefits: they are relatively cheap, often located in central London and enable students to find new friends. When issues arise, however – be it a rat invasion or a broken fridge – many students experience difficulties communicating their concerns with hall staff. For students to be able to wholly enjoy their hall experience, this lack of accountability on the part of private hall providers and general communication inefficiencies will have to be addressed.
* some names in this article were changed to maintain anonymity.
Disclaimer: Sanctuary Students and Lilian Knowles House were not immediately available for a comment.
