Manchester students offered £100 a week to live in halls… in Liverpool

Manchester Metropolitan University students have been offered £100 a week to live in a different city and town.

The accommodation crisis for Manchester Metropolitan University students means some have been offered “temporary options” in a different town or city to where they will be studying.

The university has “significantly more offer-holders than anticipated” and has had to offer accommodation in Liverpool and Huddersfield.

Yesterday, students waiting for accommodation updates received a message on the portal  emphasising the demand for housing in Manchester and were offered residence at halls “a short distance away” in Liverpool and Huddersfield, Manchester Evening News reports.

MMU has assured students these halls are around a “15 minute walk” from a train station where students can then get a 40-minute train to Manchester. Students that have been offered accommodation in locations over 30 miles away from Manchester, will received £100 a week to cover additional living and travelling expenses.

One student who received this offer told Manchester Evening News: “No one really knows what’s going on, the communication has been awful, we’ve only found this out yesterday because we’ve been told to wait for days. But obviously we weren’t them expecting to come out with a whole new city and offer us that, so it was a surprise.”

“I’ve been on the lookout for accommodation since June. I was told to wait until results day and I was expecting places to become available and some apparently did. The whole system of getting accommodation is through a portal, and the information we’ve been told to secure a place is to just stay on the portal and refresh it.

The photography first-year student said: “I’m due to start within two weeks. I live in Staffordshire which would just take about 40 minutes on the train, it would be quite pointless for me to pay however much a week to go to Liverpool. That is not the city that I was expecting to live in and it’s competently different experience for me. I’m in a fortunate situation that I’m only 40 minutes away.”

A Manchester Metropolitan University spokesperson said: “Manchester is an incredibly popular student city and there is significant demand for accommodation. We have offered places to our target student numbers this year and planned our accommodation based on long-term experience of how many of those offers are likely to be accepted, while also building in a considerable cushion.

“However, significantly more offer-holders than anticipated have been accepting and meeting the conditions of our offer. The issue around accommodation availability affects around 2% of undergraduate students planning to join us in September.

“While we continue to work hard to secure accommodation for them in the city region, we are now providing temporary options with our private hall partners in Liverpool and Huddersfield. We will cover travel costs to Manchester for any students who take up this offer.

“We know that this will be disappointing for them, and we are doing everything we can to find them to rooms in Manchester as soon as we can.”

On its website, MMU guarantees an offer of University-approved accommodation to all full-time undergraduate students registered by 29 July 2022. Those who confirmed a place at Man Met as their insurance choice or through clearing on results day (18th August) are not guaranteed accommodation. Although the clearing process is open until 18th October, clearing at Manchester Met is now closed for 2022 entry.

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