Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support his Department is providing to university students tied into rental agreements during the covid-19 outbreak.

As my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have both made clear, the government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by Covid-19.

Students will continue to receive scheduled payments of loans towards their living costs for the remainder of the 2019/20 academic year.

While it is for universities and private accommodation providers to make their own decisions about charging rents to absent students, we would encourage them to consider the fairness of doing so and to clearly communicate their policies to students. It is also important to stress that accommodation providers should not have instructed any student to leave. If any accommodation provider did formally instruct a student to leave the property then it would be unacceptable to continue to charge student rents.

Students who are tenants with individual private landlords should discuss the possibility of an early release from their lease. As tenants, students are entitled to support such as repayable rent reductions or postponements and assurances that eviction proceedings cannot begin against them for 3 months if they are impacted by Covid-19. However, students renting under licence (which is the case in most halls of residence) are ineligible for this support.

Students with a part-time employment contract should speak to their employer about the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/financial-support-for-businesses-during-coronavirus-covid-19 - which has been set up to help pay staff wages and keep people in employment.

We have also asked that higher education providers pay particular attention to the additional financial hardships that are being faced by student staff who have been reliant on income from campus-based jobs at this time.

If a student thinks that their accommodation provider is treating them unfairly, they can raise a complaint under the accommodation codes of practice as long as their 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.rla.org.uk/about/nrla-code-of-practice.shtml.