Finished? Warden claims building site Hiatt Baker is ready for move-in day

Hiatt Baker’s warden has said more than 300 freshers will be moving into “finished” halls, despite the fact builders have admitted being nowhere near finished.

The university is now desperate to have the completed buildings signed off to them on Thursday, just 24 hours before the move-in date.

The 314 new rooms were supposed to be ready in June, but builders have been missing their completion deadlines all summer.

Freshers will be moving into this building site in just two days

Today the new halls were still just a building site, with construction men hard at work with drills and saws. The area is filled with scaffolding, cranes and dozens of white vans for various flooring, plumbing and gardening companies that are still working on the buildings.

But Hiatt Baker warden Gordon Trevett is trying to convince us the new buildings are ready. Yesterday, he said: “It’ll be finished Thursday,” before changing his mind and insisting: “It’s all finished. Everything’s fully open. All they’ve got to do is put the trees in.”

‘All they’ve got to do is put the trees in’

A Hiatt Baker secretary overseeing the construction had a different story. They said: “The rooms are done, it’s just the outside that needs finishing. They’re nowhere near finishing, they need to finish all the decoration on the outside.

“The students are moving in on Friday. It’ll have to be done by then, it’ll just have to be.”

The new buildings are surrounded by scaffolding and cranes and builders are still working on them

She also explained the construction company, Vinci, missed their original June deadline and were now “on penalties” – being fined for every day past the deadline.

But that’s not making them work any faster, apparently. A builder at the site said: “It’s not going to be ready. It’s nowhere near ready.”

Sacks of soil for the gardens still haven’t been opened

Once the new halls are complete, the university’s going to start renovation on the original Hiatt Baker buildings, so freshers will still not be free of the building work noise.

Construction of the new halls started in September 2012. The university is building a new transport hub and nine new blocks – four blocks of townhouses for 112 students, and five blocks of flats for 202 students. That’ll bring the total to 768 Hiatt Baker freshers.

The area is full of white vans for various decorating companies