Purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) and student housing: research findings

Key Messages from Stakeholder Interview Findings

• Proposals from stakeholders to address affordability problems included those who argued for Scottish Government increasing funding for students or other approaches e.g. bursaries, but also others who stressed the need for much better evidence on student costs and resources, to help quantify and address affordability properly.
• There was considerable support to encourage the supply-side to develop more midrange, more affordable accommodation (and not rely on older, depreciating student accommodation to provide lower rents).
• Regulation and the 28 days' notice period are the sharper areas for different views held strongly by student bodies in opposition (to different degrees) to the supply-side (providers, investors and institutions).
• A key question for the Review to consider is to what extent can and should Scotland move away from the present situation where anomalies of treatment for PBSA student accommodation exist relative to the PRS, and for which different constituencies and policymakers argue for and against maintenance of the status quo? Is there, instead, a different balance that can be found which does not undermine the fundamental business model or the educational objectives of the HE sector, and at the same time does not lead to narrowed choice and unaffordability for growing numbers of students?
• There is no requirement for HMO PRS to tell the local landlord register that lets are for students, creating difficulties in fully understanding the size and range of student accommodation as a whole and particularly via the HMO private rental market. The information and evidence problems we have identified within the PBSA segment apply, in different ways, across all student accommodation.
• On redress – nomination agreements are a good way potentially to ensure student complaints about private PBSA are heard through the educational provider input. We note the discrepancy between a more sceptical NUS Scotland and other stakeholder views regarding whether the forms of redress are adequate and sufficient, or in fact whether students either do not really understand how they can seek redress and in what circumstances.
• Dundee/St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh universities have all frequently exceeded their targets for guaranteed places and usually in the hundreds per year. This is a worrying situation given the tightness of the student accommodation market and the inevitable delay between identifying an investment opportunity and getting new supply available to students. In between times, universities are obliged to be creative and look to different often sub-optimal solutions to meet their guarantees to students.

Overall, there is a supply-side view seeking to defend the system as it largely is (e.g. returning to the pre-COVID system of not having 28 day notice periods) or proposing incremental change only for areas like accommodation mix, achieving affordability and regulating PBSA. The NUS Scotland view is that the private sector is highly deregulated, is often very expensive, that there is some poor quality and poor practice, and a sense that it is not clear that redress works effectively and certainly not consistently.