Manchester University students living in ‘rodent infested’ mouldy digs upgraded for free after they complained to staff

Students at one of the UK’s most prestigious universities have had their accommodation upgraded because their halls of residence were so disgusting.

Eight students at the University of Manchester said they spent months complaining about the state of their rooms and communal areas, which were infested with rats and mice.

They described the damp being so bad they would collect ‘litres of water’ every day in dehumidifiers and the kitchen had black mould. One of the walls had also partially collapsed in the university-owned Oak House accommodation block in the Fallowfield area of the city.

One of the students, Callum Lawford, says he spent months complaining to the university about the terrible conditions, for which the university charges £400 a month.

The students eventually reached the end of their tether when mice and rats started to appear from under the oven.

‘It was horrible,’ Callum told Yahoo News UK. ‘One of the rooms was so covered in mould that it hit you like a wall when you walked in. It was uninhabitable.

‘My flatmate staying in that room would wake up with a sore throat every single day and the university staff were very dismissive. They joked and said he’d probably just been kissing too many girls.’

When Callum complained his room had become so damp his photos were ‘turning into scrolls’, a university accommodation staff member told him to leave the window open.

‘Which, obviously, I couldn’t do over the whole of the Christmas holiday,’ Callum pointed out.

He also described how a broken heating element in the kitchen and faulty electricals led to a fire inside the oven.

In the bathroom, a removed wall panel leaked with black sludge and rotten wood coated the insides.

‘I didn’t want to go back to university. Imagine living in a normal house and then going back to one filled with vermin with the walls falling off,’ Callum said.

‘It’s really affected my first year of university and it’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of my experience here.

‘Every single one of my flatmates has said the same thing: we’ll always remember living here.’

The student’s situation isn’t a rare one; accommodation staff not fulfilling their duty of care is a broader issue affecting universities all around the UK.

The National Student Accommodation Survey 2017 found that just 21 per cent of housing issues were resolved within 24 hours and nearly half took more than a week to be sorted.

More than a third of students (34%) said these problems affected their university-owned accommodation.

The National Union of Students found more than three quarters (76%) of students had problems with their privately-rented accommodation.

Similar to Callum, these were issues with condensation (52%), mould (47%) or damp (41%).

Callum said he first reported the problems in September using the university’s online complaints form.

‘It was just lots of consistent little things. We reported everything online and then eventually we put a list together and went to speak to staff,’ Callum said.

‘They told us that everything we’d reported had been ignored.’

For two weeks, the students had lived with a wasps’ nest before it was removed.

The students also had to spend four days in the dark after the lights stopped working until repeat complaints to Res-Life, the university team employed to look after students welfare, finally resulted in an electrician being called.

‘When my flatmates spotted the mice last week we contacted security and Res-Life who came round and said they would follow up with us the next day.

‘We waited until 8:30pm when I rang the block manager directly, who acknowledged the report had been listed but claimed it had been marked as non-urgent.

‘What with all of the diseases mice can spread, we don’t know why it wasn’t marked as urgent.’

The students have since been offered free upgraded, en-suite accommodation in a block much closer to the university.

Callum said he was relieved the matter had finally been sorted: ‘The worst part was the constant promise of a follow-up and nothing happening. They [the accommodation staff] palmed us off and made out like it was not that big of a deal.’

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: ‘The University wants to make sure that all students in our accommodation enjoy their stay with us, and in the vast majority of cases this is what happens.

‘In this case we met with the students from this flat and apologised. Though we believe that most repairs have now been made, we are moving the residents to new accommodation to avoid any further disruption.’