Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to support Welsh students who are attending university in England with the costs of renting student accommodation in England.

Devolution means that there are a range of policies and approaches to higher education (HE) which differ between the four administrations who deal with higher education policy in the United Kingdom. It is for each administration to decide how they deploy their resources and develop their HE system. Devolution allows for the different treatment of UK students in respect of student support within different parts of the UK.

The government plays no role in the provision of student residential accommodation. Universities and private accommodation providers are autonomous and are responsible for setting their own rent agreements. We encourage universities and private landlords to review their accommodation policies to ensure they are fair, clear and have the interests of students at heart.

If a student thinks their accommodation provider is treating them unfairly, they can raise a complaint under the accommodation codes of practice as long as the provider is a code member. The codes can be found at: https://www.thesac.org.uk/, https://www.unipol.org.uk/the-code/how-to-complain and https://www.nrla.org.uk/about-us/code-of-practice.

We recognise that in the exceptional circumstances of the COVID-19 outbreak, some students may face financial hardship. Our grant funding to the Office for Students (OfS) for the current financial year includes an allocation of £5 million to HE providers in England in order to provide additional support for student hardship. This is to mitigate hardship due to COVID-19 impacts on the labour market which particularly affect, for example, students relying on work to fund their studies. In our guidance to the OfS on funding for the 2021/22 financial year we made clear that the OfS should protect the £256 million allocation for the student premiums to support disadvantaged students and those that need additional help.

Many providers have hardship funds that students can apply to for assistance should the COVID-19 outbreak affect individuals’ finances in academic year 2021/22.