As part of the Rate Your Landlord 2014 Improvement Impact Award, honouring the accommodation provider who made the biggest impact on student life in their accommodation, the following accommodation providers submitted statements and action plans following their individual feedback:

Unite Students: Grand Central

At Grand Central we are focusing on making a ‘home for success’ for all the students that live with us. That is Unite Students aim, mission and goal. We are engaging more with students.

To help us achieve a ‘home for success’ we have introduced kitchen cleaning services for ALL shared flats , this means the students can focus on their study’s and enjoying uni life, we have also partnered up with LJMU and are working on a project called ‘healthy halls’ every week we have services here in Grand Central (i.e – alcohol awareness & stop smoking services) for the students to get advice, help and information about things that could affect students life.

At Grand Central we are committed to making the student experience the best it can be.

Sanctuary Students: Marybone Student Village

Here at Marybone Student Village we care about making our accommodation inclusive and accessible to all. As such, we had a request from a student who wished to live with us who had a disability. At that point, we had no adapted rooms left and were in a place where we had to turn the student away. Rather than taking that option, we converted a bedroom that wasn't adapted allowing this student to move in and enjoy living with us here at Sanctuary Students.

We feel that taking these steps has not only improved the students' life away from home but also helped them to settle into their new life in Liverpool with ease and comfort.

Kexgill

Obviously we won “Student Landlord of the Year” so massively pleased about that! From this we are now taking the following steps.

• Clearly not complacent and must improve each year
• Improvement programme across our Liverpool properties of new bathrooms/kitchens.
• Better and more inclusive support for tenants during the year (Managers meeting directives October 2014 giving students a “Kexgill Club feel”).
• Better understanding of semester payments and adapting our rental payments accordingly.
• Full ID for all Kexgill staff. No ID no access to student properties. This is strictly enforced.
• Better energy efficiency advice to tenants.

This is not an exhaustive list but an indication of our commitment to continue improving our service to give Liverpool students a fantastic experience of university life.

Liberty Prospect Point

• In response to requests from students after applying who want to know who they will be living with, we now facilitate this by securing their consent and sharing email addresses of flatmates prior to their arrival.  This allows them to ‘break the ice’ before they join us.
• We now provide a ‘book sharing club’ which allows residents to borrow freely from a large selection of novels and text books. 
• We conduct our own ‘leavers’ survey to elicit feedback on the positives and negatives of living at Prospect Point and formulate action plans around this.

 

​​Elgin Management

We’ve made quite a few changes to Elgin Management this year to improve the service we provide to tenants.

• Maintenance

Our maintenance team now aims to respond to any reports within 24 hours. They attempt to assess the issue in this time and if possible rectify it. This has reduced our maintenance response time dramatically with most reports being addressed and rectified by the next day. It has also reduced our outstanding maintenance list considerably.

• Mildew and black mould

Our policy on mildew has now been changed. We have mirrored the council and HHSRS’s recommendations for dealing with mildew and black mould and carry out a three phase treatment on any reported cases.

• Bills inclusive packages

Our bills inclusive packages have now become a lot more flexible with prospective tenants being given a choice on their usage cap. We give a recommended usage which is what houses tend to use based on historic figures, but give prospective tenants the ability to decide how much they want to pay towards their bills.

• Liverpool Student Homes

Our properties are now registered with LSH. In addition all of our properties are registered with CLASS (The Citywide Landlord Accreditation Safety Scheme). Elgin Management will also have a presence at LSH’s housing fairs in December and January giving prospective tenants the opportunity to approach us with any questions they may have.

 

Sanctuary Students: Grenville Street

In respect of Grenville Street, the biggest improvement that we have made within the past couple of months was for a student who has come to live within the accommodation in one of our adapted studios. The student has a physical disability which prevents her from being able to push and pull the doors when coming and going to and from Grenville Street.

Sanctuary students automated 5 of the main doors in the building from the reception through to her studio and also the common room. She is now able to live more independently and therefore does not have to rely on staff or other fellow residents to allow her access around the building.This adaptation will hopefully also be of benefit to other future students and their visitors.

 

Accommod8

Following our success at the 2014 RYL Awards we are continuing our investment in our agency business and improving our student accommodation standards.

Our ongoing 5 year Property Improvement Programme involves identifying improvements and enhancements across our whole portfolio and carrying our refurbishment and modernisation such as new modern kitchens, shower rooms, hard flooring, redecoration, new furniture, TVs and broadband to ensure Liverpool’s students are attracted to our properties.

 

Premier Properties

• Aims & Objectives

To host a Welcome Evening to all new and returning tenants.  This would be an upgrade of previous years’ service where Premier Properties sent out Welcome Letters with property information and asking if there were any problems that needed sorting within their property.

We invited all tenants in each property for a convenient evening that we could go and host our Welcome Evening, taking along wine, and lots of nibbles and chocolates, we hoped to create a convivial atmosphere where we could meet up again on a social and relaxed level.

• Actions

We issued everyone with a Welcome Letter explaining the format of the evening together with information on property viewings for the next academic year.

After offering everyone a drink and having a short chat about what they were all doing at University and where they had been during the summer break.

We explained again about security in the property which we had already done when keys were handed out.  This was followed by a short talk on late night noise and consideration of neighbours.  We explained about the Noise Abatement team at the Council and the powers that they have.  We then spoke briefly about house cleaning and how a rota was a good idea.  We also confirmed that they would receive a mail confirming their energy usage with an explanation of how they could monitor this themselves.

We then gave them a short questionnaire to fill out anonymously with just the house address on.  This consisted of 7 questions.  Whilst this was being done we also had a chat about any problems that required attention in their property and anything that they would like us to do or provide for them.

• Outcome

Everyone agreed that they had really enjoyed meeting with us again and felt more confident in approaching us should any problems occur.

They said it gave them the chance to get to know us better and that the idea of a Welcome Evening in this format was excellent.

We felt that we were not just names and voices on email or over the phone. All the tenants appeared to be very grateful for our time and the answers to our questionnaire all appeared to be very positive on the whole.

The next day we followed up the questionnaire with a short Feedback report to each tenant at each property, just to confirm that we had noted all the points that had been related to in the questionnaire.  We gave them a timescale as to when these points would be actioned if necessary.