Issue 51 - University of Surrey's Student Union

News Editor: Rachel Thomason | Copy Editor: Tina MormanThe Stag | Wednesday 14 th November 2012NEWS 5NUS Welfare Zone Conference ReportJack White visits Manchester and finds that an expanding crisis in housing and worries about the police, top the agenda.Well! Now we knowwhere the £135 feegoes when NUS puts onits zone conferences. ThisJack Whiteyear's Welfare conferencewas accommodated at thePalace Hotel in Manchester, abuilding so thoroughly imperial in its opulence that at times adelegate would be forgiven for imagining themself a Victorianmerchant.Thankfully the discussion was considerably more downto-earthand in fact centred on student welfare. Nominallythe conference was focused on the Localism Act 2011, but infact other topics dominated, ranging from interfaith relationsto the elections of the Police and Crime Commissioners whichtake place this week.The conference was a great success, with the mostapplauded speakers describing how they are delegatingunion authority to ordinary students and using the powerof numbers to win campaigns for better accommodation andvoter registration, and to build up support for this month'sNUS demonstration.Housing Crisis and Article 4 DirectivesWhat on Earth are Article 4 directives? This strangeterminology refers to an aspect of the Conservative localismagenda. Councils have been given the power to set a cap onthe number of houses in an area that are able to be rented bya group of unrelated people – houses in multiple occupancy(HMO). The targets of this policy are students. Reactionarycampaigns by long-standing residents all around Britainhave lobbied the Government for many years for the rightto cap student numbers in their area, due to students' nonengagementin the community and a perception that studentsare all loud and perpetually drunk. Furthermore landlords areable to charge students vastly increased rents, while studentsgenerally are less demanding when retrieving deposits atthe end of a tenancy. This makes students a very attractivebusiness proposition and budding families much less so.The folly of the Article 4 directive is plain. Firstly students“Landlords are able to charge studentsvastly increased rents.”are increasingly unable to find a place to live in the privaterented sector. Where the directives have been implementedmost stringently, students are finding themselves homeless.Secondly the directives do not only affect students, but allHMOs. With house purchase prices so high, the average agefor a first purchase is now 37. Non-students are also findingit almost impossible to find an affordable place to live. TheHead of Campaigns of the housing charity Shelter cited theshocking example of Leeds Council's policies: at current levels,around 150 new HMOs will be licensed by 2020, but 33,000 newhouseholds will be in need of an HMO by that time.Outside the debate over student housing caps, Shelter wasthe star of the show. Head of Campaigns Antonia Bance led ahighly informative discussion of the problems facing studentsin the private rented sector. The complaints came thick andfast: high prices; poor maintenance; agents unfairly takingdeposits; the need for guarantors; nosy landlords and so on.Many unions have been taking a lead in tackling badlandlords by conducting their own surveys of studenthousing and running rate-your-landlord web sites. The needfor discretion was a big worry though, with some shamedlandlords threatening to sue unions unless all charges couldbe proven. Other conference delegates countered that bycompiling a list of all rated landlords, the bad ones can beexposed by simply praising the good ones.Known mostly for its work with homeless people, ShelterDid you know... the official definition of“affordable housing” is 80% of local marketrent rate, with no accounting for income?was in fact founded to help people in trouble with theirprivately rented homes. Of particular interest is its onlinesystem for tenants to discover whether or not their depositsare protected. This deposit protection is a legal requirementfor landlords yet many do not put their tenants' depositsinto the scheme. Students are especially at risk from badlandlords, since they often only stay in a house for a year,have little renting experience and do not have the know-howor the courage to pursue landlords when they make unfairdeductions from deposits at the end of a tenancy.With 70% of people saying that there is a crisis in housingsupply, housing is set to start making the headlines. Watchthis space for Surrey's contribution toward tackling theproblem.The Pound in Your PocketOver the last 10 months, NUS has conducted an enormouspiece of research on all the aspects of students' personalfinances that do not relate to tuition fees. The Pound in YourPocket campaign is due to report in early December.Pound in Your Pocket has found that many students aresuffering great financial hardship because of huge oversightsin the allocation of government. The policy focus thereforewill be on rearrangement of student funding strategieswithin the current funding limits. Rewriting of the processesby which students access that cash is set to be a recurringdemand of Government in forthcoming NUS policy.The possibility of overall increased funding for studentsthemselves was a moot point, however following the Decemberlaunch of Pound in Your Pocket, students' unions will be partyto a consultation process and will be able to table amendmentsto the Welfare Zone Committee's policy recommendationsbefore NUS National Conference 2013.#demo2012“Many students are suffering greatfinancial hardship.”For those living under a rock, the NUS has planned a largedemonstration against unemployment, inadequate studentfunding and the disempowerment of students, in centralLondon for Wednesday 21st November. The Zone conferencewas buzzing with enthusiasm during a session devoted tosharing best practice among attendant unions.Lee MacNeal, Campaigns Officer at the Universityof Central Lancashire Student Union was a particularlyimpressive character, talking about how he and his team hadshown leadership of the student body by knocking on doorsround the student residences to raise awareness of the demo.Police and Crime CommissionersEngland's first political police commissioners will beelected this week and the conference devoted a specialpanel debate to this topic amid concerns over how the entryof politics into the administrative arm of government willimpact upon the public.The entire panel expressed worry at how different groupsof the public will be affected. Around eight in 10 candidates inthe election are white men and the far-right is fielding manycandidates.Despite castigating the Government for making thepolice more political, the panel all supported engagementwith the election process, saying that despite the turnoutprojections indicating a historicly low vote, the Governmentwould consider the successful candidates to have a popularmandate and would not abolish the new commissioners. Someprojections have said that turnout could be as low as 8.7%.Check if your deposit is protected:http://tinyurl.com/bta2tcg© Red Morris