Tuesday 07-04-2020 - 08:13

Greater Manchester Universities, together with their students’ unions, have today appealed to private landlords to release students from their contracts.

We’re asking all private landlords to follow our University’s lead. We’d like their support for our students by releasing them from their contracts early and relieve them of their rent for the third term.

 

Our letter

We are all finding ways to navigate through these incredibly uncertain times brought about by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Whilst we are doing our utmost to support the education of our students during the coronavirus pandemic, their wellbeing is just as much a priority.

As teaching and assessment is now being conducted online, we have offered to release students who have already vacated their accommodation from the fees they pay for their Hall of Residences for the summer term. We are aware other accommodation providers have also made this same commitment.

The students who attend our universities make Greater Manchester one of the largest and most vibrant centres of its kind in Europe. The fact private rented accommodation is available helps our students live in, and contribute to, communities across the region.

As leaders of the main Higher Education institutions and Students’ Unions in Greater Manchester, we are writing to landlords to ask if there might be a way to release students who have already vacated properties from their rental contracts.

These are exceptional circumstances, and we appreciate what we are asking may be a significant act on a landlord’s behalf, and one that may be entirely dependent on their own financial situation.

However, we believe this act of generosity would make an enormous difference to our students, many of whom are experiencing hardship, and ensure that they do not suffer as a consequence of this unprecedented situation.

 

Write to your Landlord

If you're stuck in a contract with a private landlord in Manchester, we’ve set up an email template for you to use to contact them. Feel free to tweak the text to fit your specific situation and get in touch with us if you have any questions or issues at all. We’d also love to hear from you if you have any success following this email, as it might encourage other students to get in touch with their landlords too.

We appreciate that loads of you will have been working in part-time/temporary jobs or on zero-hour contracts, so may have lost your jobs as a result of this pandemic. As well as this, third term teaching is due to be delivered online, so most of you will have already moved out of your student houses and back in with your families to be around them at this uncertain time.

Remember, The Union is here to help, whenever you need us.