Cold showers, 6am drilling and NO WIFI: Residents’ outrage over Champion Hill

Brand new £182 A WEEK halls are still a building site


At a pricey £182 per week, Champion Hill, costs even more than centrally-located Stamford Street Apartments.

So imagine the horror when freshers rocked up to KCL’s newest high-end halls to find hazardous piles of wires, cold water, shoddy interiors – and NO WIFI.

Students were even forced to queue up for over 5 hours just to collect their keys to get in – as only two resident assistants were on duty to deal with hundreds of new students.

Brand new kitchens…

But it’s not just students affected by the chaos – resident assistants were supposed to move in at the end of August, but were turned due to their rooms not being finished.

And the building work on the halls – all the way in zone 2 – still aren’t complete.

They’re supposed to be KCL’s newest, plushest accommodation, but students have been left feeling shafted after they found hazardous piles of wires left in the courtyard, uncompleted landscaping and shoddy interior work too.

The tree’s not even plugged in

First year student Zainab Hussain told The Tab: “I’ve been woken up five times in the past week at 6am by a drill and what sounded like a bomb going off. The builders also hang out all day right outside my window, and all of us girls can’t even leave our blinds up cos they’re so pervy.”

Students have also been forced to make do with malfunctioning facilities.

While the rest of KCL has suffered through the college’s current timetabling problems, residents at Champion Hill have, unbelievably, absolutely no WiFi.

This has led to a number of complaints, including students missing lectures, huge phone bills – and international students left unable to get in touch with their loved ones.

Others have found their appliances to be seriously lacking.

Zainab told us: “There are six working washing machines between 700 of us.”

James Lake, a second year War Studies student, said: “The ceiling lamp in my kitchen is so precarious, we don’t eat at the kitchen table in case it falls on us”.

And first year Law student Alish Foy didn’t have hot water in her room for two weeks. “I’ve been down to the office so many times, pretty much everyday, but it took my dad actually calling the university principal for them to sort it out.”

Mary Upton, a first year History student, also spoke of being purposely misled by the residence staff. ‘There’s an extractor fan right outside my room, and it’s really noisy. They told me it was noisy because they were doing tests on it, but now it’s even louder and it really disturbs my sleep.”

An unfinished stream