x
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies to enhance your experience.
Graham Awards

TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

 Row blows up over rental perk for university Vice Chancellor

A row has blown up in Cheshire over a claim by a student tenant that she pays more rent than the college’s Vice Chancellor.

The Cheshire Live website says Chester University Vice Chancellor Eunice Simmons has an annual pay package of around £280,000 and rents on campus for £121 per week - and that is accommodation recently renovated at a reported cost of £21,000.

However, the same news website reports that the average student rent for accommodation is £149 per week.

Advertisement

This has prompted one student - Lauren Poole-Smith, 19 - to describe the perk for the Vice Chancellor as “incredibly disappointing and disheartening” which “reeks of privilege” and is “an abuse of power.”

A spokesperson for Chester University told the website that with regards to the Vice Chancellor’s rent level: “The valuation took into account that the kitchenette to be used … will also be used to service the adjacent meeting room and office so it is not self-contained like studios elsewhere on campus and the property is unfurnished, unlike other studios.

“Under the terms of the valuation contract, the university is unable to share details of the firm which carried out the work leading to the rent figure Prof Simmons will pay for the accommodation she will occupy in service to widening participation and student engagement at the university.”

Student accommodation has been in the spotlight in the past 15 months as rows have erupted over break clauses and whether students should be expected to honour tenancy contracts, despite being sent home for periods of time during the pandemic.

You can read the full Cheshire Live story here.

Want to comment on this story? If so...if any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on any basis, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.

  • Algarve  Investor

    Does seem faintly ridiculous that someone earning so much has such a low rent, particularly when many struggling students pay much more. Not a great look.

  • icon

    Slightly off subject, Norwich City Council leader on his £100k plus wage lives in a tax payer subsidized council house, thereby blocking that house from a deserving young family, to make it worst still Norwich is labour controlled and this guy is a labour councilor , so much for labour being the caring party, in it for themselves like the rest of them.

    icon

    The sooner Council Tenancies are reviewed every 5 yrs and those who no longer meet the criteria are asked to leave the better! How can this situation be possible when the demand for council houses is so great?

     
icon

Please login to comment

MovePal MovePal MovePal
sign up