Northumbria student mistakenly charged almost £20k for one term’s rent

A Northumbria student was in for a shock when she discovered she was expected to pay £19,000 for five months’ rent of her university accommodation.

Olivia, a first-year graphic design student from Northumbria, lives in Trinity Square Student Accommodation, one of the university-owned halls in the city.

“I went on the finance widget to make sure the January rent instalment went through and updated itself,” she told The Newcastle Tab. “But instead, it looks like the uni wants me to pay £19,000 by the 1st May, which is around 11 term instalments for a normal room here at trinity. And that would last me almost four years!”

Olivia was shocked to see that on her student portal she’d been charged 11 termly instalments of rent, all to be paid by 1st May.

“I honestly thought it was a glitch at first so I refreshed the page, checked again and nothing happened. I am only supposed to pay around £5200 for this year’s rent, I don’t even have £19k,” Olivia said.

Olivia reached out to the university and says she was passed on to Northumbria University’s IT team who confirmed it was an error.

“Its definitely a mistake, it’s nothing malicious or anything,” Olivia said.

A Northumbria Spokesperson said: “We’re looking into this technical error with our system and are investigating how it has happened. In the meantime we are in touch with the student and the mistake is being rectified.”

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