Levitate Student: Freshers Talking Heads - Accommodation

Freshers Accommodation Video

Two students discuss their experience of living on campus and in private rented accommodation as a first year student.

Payday Loans - guidance from Debt Camel

A survey last year found that “26,400 undergraduates and 5,400 postgraduates depend on payday lenders and could be paying annual interest rates of up to 1,500%” – so if you are a student who has fallen into the payday loan trap, you are not alone! Payday loan companies make their profits from people with money problems and students are an obvious target for them. At least one lender has students as its main market.

You may have seen that some lenders such as Wonga were made to write off loans that had been defaulted on. But even if you repaid your loans on time, you may be able to get a refund if your loan was “unaffordable” by making a complaint to the lender first, and then going to the Financial Ombudsman if the lender rejects your complaint.

A loan is “unaffordable” if you couldn’t repay it on time and still have enough money left to pay your rents, bills, and everyday living costs such as transport and food. For students, this means looking at what your expenses would be before your next student loan or grant payments arrive. If you repaid £300 at the start of October it may have felt easy, but as a result you didn’t have enough to live on and had to borrow again before the next term started – in this case the loan you repaid in October wasn’t “affordable”.

The Ombudsman is often looking at cases where people have borrowed on a regular basis and deciding perhaps the first loan was OK because the lender couldn’t have realised the borrower had problems. But students have a pretty low income, and so any indication of repeat borrowing should have made the lender stop and think whether they should lend to you again… but all too often they didn’t, just handing out more loans.

There are some template letters for making an affordability complaint on my website at Can you get a payday loan refund? You will need to change these to tell your story, for example mentioning when you get your grant money and what your expenses are until the next instalment.

Where a complaint succeeds, the lender is normally told to refund all the interest and charges that were added, plus 8% interest. And also delete the loans from your credit record, as they should never have been made.

This is a guest post by Sara Williams, a CAB advisor who blogs about debt at Debt Camel. 

Note from Levitate Student - thanks to Sara for this excellent post. Some students face challenges trying budget on student finance much of which is  paid quarterly, and this can lead to pressure to find funds in the short term. High cost credit is unlikely to be the right solution and could lead to long term problems. Always seek advice from your institution money advisers or other trusted money advisers about income maximisation and debt issues. See Know Where to Look page.

Levitate Student - Accommodation Protest

UCL Students protest accommodation costs

Students at UCL are working up to a rent strike regarding the soaring accommodation costs as reported here by The Independent 

This is an important matter for the students, their families and the institutions themselves.

University halls vary widely in quality and price. The contract terms too vary with respect to number of weeks the tenancy runs, times when the room needs to be vacated, bills & extras included and so on. Universities vary too in the housing stock available, some able to accommodate all their freshers, others directing their students to private halls of residence or the private landlord sector.

Student in accommodation

Universities vary in when and how they take the rent payments. Many take the rent in termly installments. Some front load their accommodation charge such that the first installment of rent is perhaps 40% rather than a third of the full cost. This strategy can leave a new student with little no student finance left in their bank account. Starting their student life overdrawn or turning to family for extra help. This can certainly diminish the excitement of the start of their new journey. Also it can come as a shock to a new student, who after a week or two decides they do not like the university & wants to withdraw, that they are tied into that legal tenancy. They didn't realise they would still expected to pay the rent or find a replacement student for their room. 


New students may feel a pressure to move into halls or risk miss out on the full student experience. They may worry that the option of looking for a room in a student private rented is too scary for a first year especially as they wouldn't know their housemates.  

How much does the pressure on the students give confidence to the senior managers, responsible for the accommodation income, to hike the rent tariffs? We recall one such manger saying - "well they keep on signing up which is good". That's the bottom line, if they "sell" every room then that understandably affords them confidence. 

The student consumer is not really empowered in this transaction. Many must feel like they have no option but to sign up. That then leads to the collective consumer grievance now being expressed by students at UCL and expressed by many students up and down the UK. As consumers some feel they have to buy into a service which they don't consider value for money or affordable based on their circumstances. 

Money Bee

The growing dissatisfaction will not be going unnoticed by university senior management teams. Universities have shifted to calling students customers and now need to respond appropriately to that customer voice. 

Students need to be confident and empowered consumers, be fully informed and raise their concerns to seek the changes in the student industry that they want.

See our Know Where to Look pages for Housing Advice

Levitate Student: EU students -

EU students - changes to residency rules

On March 1st 2016 Joe Johnson MP (Minister of State for Universities and Science) announced a significant planned change to the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011 which will change the residency requirements for EU national students.

Currently an EU national is entitled to apply for

• Tuition Fee Loan only if they come to UK to study in Higher Education
• Tuition Fee Loan and Living Cost Support (currently loans and grants) if they have lived in UK for 3 years prior to the start of their course.
• Tuition Fee and Living Cost Support if they are a EEA Migrant Worker or Family Member of a Migrant Worker

The proposal is to increase the residency requirement from 3 years to 5 years before an EU national can be eligible for the living cost support in their student finance package.

The government cite the increasing pressure on the student finance budget due to the level of EU applicants and their desire to manage the burden on the tax payer as their reason for the change. The changes will impact students starting a new course in academic year 2016/17.

Many EU nationals of course fall into the category of an EEA Migrant Worker and pay taxes themselves to the UK. These changes will not affect the entitlement of Migrant Workers and their families according to the statement. Neither will it affect "those who are already studying". 

If you are an EU national living in England and thinking of starting a Higher Education course please seek advice on this change before starting the course.

It will be interesting to see how the devolved government and assemblies of Northern Ireland, Scotland an Wales respond to this change and whether they follow suit. 

Useful information and guidance is available through UKCISA