While investigating the residence system, SCAN invited students who felt they had been overcharged during inspection to speak up about their grievances.
“I’m in Fylde College and after cleaning my room up on the last day, leaving it perfectly respectable, I was charged with my entire deposit,” said Daniel Holland, who graduated in July. “Yet my friend who lived next door to me was given over £100 of his back, and I also found it quite coincidental that my charges added exactly up to the deposit that I paid, not a penny under or a penny over.”
Feeling that the charge was inaccurate and unfair, Holland has attempted to dispute the deductions, but says that his Residence Officer has been “stubborn regarding the decision that was made.”
“She’s given me a list of the individual charges but the state that I left my room in, to have had such large deductions that I’ve had, I still can’t see where they’ve got them all from.”
An anonymous student, also from Fylde College, incurred a charge for removing the pin from her fire extinguisher, “yet the fire service will come round and do this for free,” she said.
She also spoke of deductions to a friend’s deposit at the end of her first year, including a charge for paintwork damage.
“She moved back into the same flat and the same room the next year, and none of the repairs had taken place,” she said. “The charges are known across campus for being very high. After spending hours cleaning in your third term of first year it seems really unfair to be lumped with massive amounts of charges.”
As a result of this, the student “will not be living [on campus] again […] due to the very high rates and the risk of high fines for things that don’t cost that much to fix.”
